Black and White
by Kapootya
Summary: It was supposed to be three seconds of eternal damnation...but she was four seconds ahead of him.
1. Surprise Attack

Sakura: Age 20  
Mirai: Japanese for the word Future

Mist Village: Diplomat and Surgery

Sakura crossed out her most recent assignment from her little leather bound notebook, as she headed towards the gates of the Mist Village. The two shinobi's standing guard gave her a polite nod that she returned gracefully as she placed her leather-bound booklet back into her small messenger bag that she had slung over her shoulders. She walked onto the empty dirt road surrounded by tall luscious green trees, behind her she could hear the wooden gates being closed. After Water Country's Civil War, all villages were being precocious of visitors, not that the beautiful blue country housing the largest number of missing nin had been very hospitable prior to them trying to slaughter one another for verbal accusations.

Sakura looked ahead towards the slow sunrise over horizon before her.

She had time, she assessed, plenty of time.

She was dressed in her traveling attire. Black gi pants stuffed into black traveling boots, and a dark gray turtle neck top with removable sleeves. Nothing special, besides it took her five days to get to Mist Village and she had to go through three different climate changes – she didn't need to go out of her way to look pretty or appealing.

The only item which looked remotely fashionable was her green shaded glasses that hid her coal black eyes. She found that her new color eyes had little sympathy in them – and it wouldn't do to waste chakra on genjutsu while healing patients and when engaged in combat, she didn't give a damn what her enemy thought of her eyes. So the only reason for her glasses was to give the illusion that her eyes were dark green, it comforted her patients and associates.

She brushed her hair off her shoulders lazily with her hand and allowed it to sway behind her in the wind. She used to sport short hair for practical purposes, but the cons began to out way the pros when she realized the advantages of long hair. A female with long hair meant that others underestimate you as a shinobi, and it also provided the extra feminine touch that Sakura needed on undercover assassination missions.

She was used to being underestimated, for being a girl, for being a Haruno, for being 'just a medic', in the end, her very existence was reason enough for strangers to think of her as weak. But when she traveled to other villages, her passport and documents stated who she was and her presence demanded respect, most ninjas and intellectuals recognized the Ying Seal on her forehead – identical that of the great Hokage.

In her recent mission, the leader of the village was very respectful, after all he expected her to cure his child of a devastating illness.

She, of course, knew all thirteen different methods on how to cure the illness before leaving her home town of Konoha. Then about half an hour before meeting the child, she had deduced the best means of healing the child that would result in minimal brain damage and almost no blood loss. Her Mirai made life easier for her on so many levels.

More levels than she'd be willing to admit.

After all, she would kill Sasuke in cold blood. That hadn't changed in years and no matter how often she tried to deny it, it remained true. Her visions never lied and her Mirai was the only truth Sakura knew anymore. There was no softening it, no sugar coating – it was only a matter of time before her hands would be stained with Sasuke's blood and the more she saw it…the less impact it had on her. Hundreds of times she had seen herself give a final and devastating blow to Sasuke…and she finally accepted it without an ounce of guilt or remorse. It would just happen and there was no reason to feel anything over the inevitable…she had done enough feeling for him already anyway.

Sakura sprinted out into a run after she declared herself a good distance away from the Mist territory. She was faster than she was eight years ago…the day she met her team – the now Legendary Team Seven. Time had changed everything, and now she even had a name in the Bingo book, high A class at that. Yet her teammates had no idea how good she had finally gotten unless they listened to rumors, and Sakura had a feeling that they probably scuffled at them and rationalized it as exaggeration.

She was finally better than all of them, and they had no idea. In actuality no one knew just how good she was. She knew she could probably put up a good fight and defeat Sasuke, Naruto, Kakashi, Yamato, and Sai and that was taking into account of the possibility that their powers had doubled since they left. The only way Kakashi would guarantee his win would be if he traded his remaining natural eye for a Byakugan eye. After all, it would take a Byakugan eye and a Sharingan eye to copy her moves.

She bit her lip in discomfort as her gut clenched in a strange way – a signal that her Mirai was warning her of something.

Something bad was about to happen.

Fog immediately clouded her vision faster than nature would have ever intended. She stopped running and her Mirai played out a hundred different scenarios in a mere second as she realized it was an illusion. Quickly she dispelled it with a simple hand movement.

The fog dissipated with her command.

The pink haired ninja knew most genjutsus and dispelling them had become second nature to her. The only threatening ones that she knew of were those of the genjutsu weaver in the East and Itachi's Demonic Illusions. Thankfully, she had no intentions of encountering either man.

Through her eyes she examined her black and white surroundings – she sensed nothing.

She used the first stage of her Mirai and jumped ahead seeing what would occur if she would remain in place, and if she would continue her journey.

_A minute. _

_Five minutes. _

_Ten minutes. _

_Fifteen minutes. _

_Nothing. _

She returned back to the present and did a final search for chakra energies around her. She was unable to locate anything threatening, dangerous, or foreign so with a deep breath she relaxed her tense muscles. Just because she couldn't find anything in twenty minutes didn't mean that there wasn't something waiting for her just a little later.

_So to be on the safe side. _

She began walking down the open trail, and activated her Mirai – escaping the presenting and walking five minutes into the future. At least if she would die in five minutes she could prevent it.

Because she could prevent everything.

Almost everything.

There were a handful of futures that Sakura was well aware she couldn't prevent – like murdering Sasuke, the boy she once loved. She thought maybe she still loved him, maybe…but no. Sakura didn't love anyone anymore; she had nearly forgotten how to feel any sort of true companionship since she was always prepared for someone to backstab and leave her.

Sakura justified that she no longer loved anyone, because love hurt and it was human nature to avoid pain. It was an act of self preservation. She was tired of the distrust and even more, she was tired of the lies. She was equally tired of getting left behind and not being accepted.

But now, being able to see the lies before they happened, discovering the deceits before they were revealed…Sakura no longer wanted anything to do with anyone…especially not Team Seven. They could go off on their little save Sasuke mission for the rest of their lives if they wanted to.

She closed her eyes as she continued her peaceful walk – she was becoming agitated with her own thoughts and with intense concentration she went through the motions to clear her mind, unfortunately, with outstanding failure. Her mind, against her own wishes, traveled to the day Team Seven truly fell apart. Or maybe it had fallen apart long before then, and Sakura was unable to pinpoint the underlining hints in time to prevent it.

Sakura internally mused that it would be the five year anniversary of their departure from Konoha in a week and the four year anniversary of her removal from Team Seven.

Her mind displayed the vivid memory without a speck of color.

She had long forgotten what color looked like and it had been years since it actually bothered her. The steady progression to color blindness came natural to her and it was a very small price to pay for what she gained.

Sakura recalled Naruto, Sai Kakashi, and Rin? _No, Rina_…Sakura nodded to herself as she remembered watching them leave with their new medic. She didn't shed a single tear in front of them as Naruto promised to bring Sasuke back, her one true love.

Of course it was a lie; both Naruto bringing him back and Sasuke being her one true love.

She didn't wish the team good luck or give them any encouragement. She just stared at them, like a ghost silently observing its surroundings moments after death – there but not there; an intangible entity. She didn't see their mission as a mission to bring back Sasuke. Instead, in hindsight, she now saw what really happened. Her team moved on without her. Rina was a more experienced medic ninja and Tsunade didn't believe Sakura was ready. The unfairness of being a medic was if you were capable of A-class wound healing, you could only go on B-class missions. The reasoning was for safety precautions because medics were considered support and support was considered the weakest link. Especially since most medics were not skilled in offensive styles and their defenses were usually just subpar which meant they had to be protected. By not sending Sakura, and sending an ANBU alumni medic who had been through much worse than the S-class mission of Sasuke Retrieval – the chances of success tripled. Sakura was a hindrance.

Tsunade tries to comfort her apprentice, saying that she was only fifteen years old and just needed more practice. It was easy for Sai – he was trained since birth to be an emotionless, heartless, ANBU killing machine. There was always someone training him – always someone looking over his shoulder and making sure he was perfect. Naruto had someone too – Jiraiya. Besides the short escapades of wandering into bathhouses, the old man placed Naruto as his top priority…Sakura – she wasn't anyone's top anything. Tsunade was Hokage, and Hokage meant that the blonde busty woman was lucky to have a few sober hours a week to train with her student.

Sakura's internal self snapped at her. She was losing focus. She silently reprimanded herself for dwelling on what was for much longer than necessary. It didn't matter what happened in the past. The future was what was important; her Mirai was important.

Nartuo wouldn't find Sasuke. She would.

They wouldn't bring him back. She'd kill him.

That was a fact.

Suddenly a huge curved blade with no hilt came from the darkness of the forest and struck Sakura at her slide, slicing right through her rib cage. She didn't notice it coming at her because she wasn't concentrating enough on her surroundings. It just proved that the past was what would get her killed. She didn't scream as she felt the pain vibrate through her body and her knees gave out sending her to the ground.

She had no reason to heal the wound or even get up to fight her enemy.

With a blink of her eyes she returned back to five minutes ago.

_Thirty degrees to my right in four minutes and fifty-seven seconds. _

She absentmindedly placed her hand into her bag and kept it there, making sure the position she had her arm locked in looked comfortable and natural – not at all suspicious. As she walked, she went ahead in time in real-time to conserve chakra and decided not to do anything about the attempted murder to see if maybe she survived the hit and could identify the one responsible. 6 minutes and fifteen seconds into the future, a rogue ninja with an unidentifiable headband around his large tanned bicep walked from the depths of the forest and approached her lying body. Sakura couldn't make out the symbol of his headband because of the way he had tied it and she took note that he didn't wear a shirt or any form of protection – cocky bastard. The kunoichi also saw the different cuts and deep scars that he sported around his body.

She scuffled to herself internally, wondering if he thought himself as a powerful ninja, as her present self placed a fingertip on a kunai that was carefully hidden in the lining of her bag. She silently activated the fire tag on it with a one handed seal and continued watching her soon to be murderer approach her limp body in another when.

"It's her, she's down," his husky voice echoed in Sakura's ears as he bent down to examine her injured body.

So there's more than one she deduced, unless he really was talking to himself so loudly. Sakura wouldn't dismiss the idea of the man being insane.

The man tugged Sakura up by the hair, and she could feel a sliver of blood escape the corner of her mouth. Again she refused to heal herself because she wanted to see if the man was there for kidnapping, murder, or torture. "Doesn't look like much, does she?" He asked as he turned over his shoulder but Sakura couldn't see anyone behind him.

She gritted her teeth as her index finger hooked onto another two kunai.

Apparently her murder's friend didn't want to come out. He probably noticed something was wrong when the medic ninja got attacked and refused to heal herself. Smart boy.

She dispelled her Mirai completely and returned to the present.

Two minutes and forty seconds.

She sighed as she looked up to the gray sky which was probably a spotless crystal blue to others. She supposed it was a lovely day.

_Lovely day to die…I guess. _

She repeated the scenario again in level one Mirai to see if the second man would come out if she healed herself and prepared for a fight. He didn't.

So she remained in the present and tried to keep herself from trying out another scenario – she had to conserve her chakra for the actual fight that was about to occur.

She was _almost_ invincible in battle because her Mirai could be activated quickly, allowing her to look at hundreds of possible decisions in the time it took someone to blink or she could examine her future in real time. She preferred to use it in real time when there was no eminent danger since the slower version used up almost no chakra and placed very little strain on her body. Especially with the upcoming scenario she wanted to wait to see if there would be real danger before putting her Mirai into full drive. She was at a little under fifty percent chakra because of the surgery she had done throughout the night. Using her Mirai in its full potential in its first stage would have been foolish if she wasn't engaged with the enemies.

She also knew that her enemies could only sense six percent of her current energy which would greatly undermine their belief in her ability to fight them off. Excellent chakra control was good for disguising her chakra supply. She had learned a long time ago that having people presume her as weak always gave her the advantage. Plus it had made for a sweeter kill. She had become a vindictive little vixen.

Sakura decided to risk losing a little more chakra because she was just impatient as hell and time was moving too slow. She went ahead two minutes and thirty-four seconds in real time and threw the three explosive kunia's where she knew one of her murderers were located and the other two in the most probable locations of the mysterious enemy.

Hearing a hoarse scream, she knew she hit her intended target but she also felt, more than saw, someone dodge her attack with unparallel speed and run away. It was just a momentary feeling but she had sense that his chakra reserves which were nearly three times her own at max.

Sakura decided to follow the man who ran away, ignoring the injured one in the bushes. She assumed the runaway was also the one that refused to come out but his speed out matched hers tenfold and all her energy spent on trying to catch up was hopeless and seemingly useless.

So she returned back to the present as her mind nagged her with its mental countdown, _twenty seconds_. She counted backwards with each calculated and collective step.

Sakura wondered if she should have tried to avoid the fight altogether, but it was already too late, her decision was made and she hadn't bothered to look at the outcomes of running away.

Five seconds.

She kept her clam exterior as the only sounds in the forest were her footsteps and birds singing in a distance. They were good at hiding; she complimenting them neutrally as she made sure her eyes avoided the spot she assumed them to be waiting in.

Two seconds.

One second.

Her kunais flew out of her fingers and into the forest with a loud explosion. Quickly she jumped into the depths of the forest on the opposite side of the road and created two clones. She lent both of her clones minimal amounts of chakra – just enough to be detected. She sent one after the man who ran away, and the other scouted the explosion.

Sakura remained nearby with eyes closed behind her green shades and her vision became engulfed by darkness as she concentrated on staying connected to her clones. It was her own special jutsu, she created them like normal but placed a copy of 65 percent of the chakra into the clones eyes and concentrated the same amount into her own. This allowed for better control and she could observe what they saw instantaneously. Her left eye saw one clone and her right eye saw the other – her Mirai worked subconsciously to keep her safe.

The man who had escaped had outran her clone and that was a given so she wasn't surprised, but for her not to chase the man who she had supposedly sensed nearby would have been illogical. She had to make the runaway believe that she was the target he was after.

The other clone examined the area of explosion and noticed that her would be murderer had performed a suicidal jutsu with a final message written in his blood beside him. "You haven't won."

_Ironic. _He was the dead one after all.

Sakura dismissed the nearby clone and waited five minutes before dismissing her other. After all, five minutes was more than ample time for an average ninja to understand when they are out of their league. At least that's what Sakura wanted the man to think; she was just an average ninja.

The pink haired girl looked ahead into the future once more. Five minutes after she called off her clones nothing occurred to her.

Ten minutes, and she walked peacefully along the road.

Twenty minutes, and she just passed by an elderly man in a wagon pulled by two oxen.

Thirty minutes, and she was crossing a wooden bridge while a pale bird landed in the middle of the railing and stared at her.

Forty minutes and she had reached the spot where she had hidden her ANBU uniform and weapons for the next mission.

Sakura gasped as she returned to the present, it hurt to look further, so she calmed her eyes and sent a wave of numbing chakra into her temples. She began jumping from branch to branch into the depths of the forest for eight minutes before returning to the designated road. Everything went as she had seen it go.

The old man had greeted her and Sakura smiled her soft warm smile – a smile that would rival Sai's in terms of realness. Ten minutes later, Sakura rejoined the depths of the forest and continued east – sidetracking from the civilian road leading to the next Water Country village.

She felt a warm breeze caress her skin like finger tips and shivered – she hadn't felt that kind of soft touch by the wind since…

Sakura's eyes narrowed.

She hadn't felt that type of warm and comforting breeze since she had been cast down into the private library with ancient scrolls to organize – back when she thought herself as truly useless. It was about a year after her team left her and she had committed herself fully to hospital duty, training with Tsunade and Shizune, while simultaneously drowning herself in self pity. No one could say that she wasn't a good depressive.

Sakura unwillingly recalled the day Tsunade had called her into her office after her morning shift in the hospital. It was a time of peace with all the nations and the Hokage was in a wonderful mood. And just like any mood she had, it was a worthy occasion to acknowledge with sake.

Sakura walked into her mentor's office, which was in disarray, since Tsunade declared that paperwork could wait – for a week. Shizune greeted her with Tomtom cradled in her arms and the blonde slammed down her sake cup after taking a healthy shot.

"SAKURA!" Her mentor greeted her with a huge grin.

"Hello, Tsunade-sama," Sakura said bowing down politely.

"Great news!" Tsunade said with a sparkle in her eye.

Sakura cringed, last time there was good news, Tsunade wanted Sakura to knock down a mountain for training. She was too weak to do it at that time and felt her ego take a huge hit. The young girl didn't want to feel anymore insubordinate at that moment.

"I have just discovered that our medical and historical library is a total mess…" she smiled sheepishly.

Sakura sighed, but she was inwardly grateful. The less time she had to spend at home, the better. She loved her family and all, but her ninja career seemed to have come to an end since she was a chunin and remained in that position showing no promise of excelling. The disappointment in her father's eyes as Sakura had to tell him about her friends who were advancing to Jonin and going on missions that cemented their reputation as ninjas who protected and served the people of Konoha could have been seen by a blind person.

Sakura was a medic.

Not a ninja.

And even if she wanted to be a field medic, she had to be better than her counterparts to even be considered being allowed to join a mission.

Sakura growled internally as she pushed the thoughts out of her mind. She was not just a medic anymore; she was an ANBU captain in Bark – Tsunade's counter action against Danzou's Root. There was no reason to dwell on the stupid.

Stupid was how she often referred to the past…since she could rarely find anything truly useful in it.

_There was absolutely nothing in the past worth looking at,_ she declared to herself wordlessly, as she jumped out of a tree and landed on the ground gracefully.

The past had never saved her.

But, Sakura mused as she walked towards a tree which had two long broken branches lying near its trunk forming an X, the past held some influence on who she'd become.

* * *

**A/N:** If you're confused on her abilities and such...good ;)

Everything will be cleared up shortly.

Thank you for reading! I really appreciate all the comments 3


	2. Mirai

"Yo, Itachi!" Kisame yelled as the tall corpse colored man opened the room that the two missing nins had been renting for the past three days, to see his partner in a mesh shirt and black gi pants – eyes closed, meditating on the living room wooden floor.

Itachi breathed out a short syllable grunt in response as he opened his blood red eyes and gave Kisame an annoyed look. Itachi hated being disturbed while meditating.

_If looks could kill…._Kisame usually avoided his gaze because Itachi's looks could kill.

"Leader got us a new mission," Kisame said picking up his large bandaged sword from near the dresser and tossed it over his shoulder.

Itachi slowly stood up from his former position and nodded at his sharp toothed partner, "Where?" He asked with his normal chilling voice as he made his way towards the lumpy old couch to pick up his black coat with the symbolic red cloud motif.

Kisame extended a small scroll to Itachi but his partner ignored it as he button up his Akatsuki jacket, "A few miles from the Paper Village. Two Konoha ANBUs are getting one, so we steal it from 'em…but we have to keep one of 'em alive. Leader said so," he finished speaking as he placed the small scroll back into his jacket. He hated to keep his enemies alive but Pein's word was law, so he would do as he was ordered through gritted teeth.

"Scroll?" Itachi looked up at his partner to signify he was ready.

"Yeap, seems that's all we've been doing now-a-days, eh?"

"Hn," Itachi breathed out again as both Akatsuki members made their way out of the hotel room calmly.

.

…

.

There was absolutely nothing in the past worth looking at, she declared to herself wordlessly, as she jumped out of a tree and landed on the ground gracefully.

The past had never saved her.

But, Sakura mused as she walked towards a tree which had two long broken branches lying near it's trunk forming an X, the past held some influence on who she'd become.

She removed her bag from her shoulders as she bent down in front of the tree and closed her eyes in deep concentration – trying to pick up any human chakra patterns in the area.

None.

Then she made sure she was safe for the next ten minutes before acting in the present. Afterwards, she moved the branch aside and with her bare hands scooped up the loose dirt and dug out a large dark colored backpack with a thin paper kanji seal placed over its zipper.

Sakura's mind agitated her further as her subconscious sent her the question of what she would be like if she had never gone to the library and discovered that scroll. But that was a redundant question, because she couldn't see into the past's possibilities – only the future.

She uncursed the visible seal and then released the invisible barrier she placed over it. Slowly she unbound the backup seal she had placed on the backpack and took out her ANBU gear. Her mask was made in the shape of a cat with longer whiskers and two round circles on its cheeks; she wasn't sure what color the whiskers or painted blush was. She assumed black and red.

It was blue and pink.

She kicked off her boots and stretched her tired feet. Carefully she began to undress herself out of the civilian clothing and after removing her top and gi pants, she grinned slyly. _What an image_, she thought to herself, _an ANBU changing in the forest_. If an enemy ninja would have encountered her at that point, they would have proclaimed her as an early birthday present to themselves. But she knew that no one was going attack her in the next eight minutes and twenty-seven seconds, so she could prance around naked in the forest for all she cared. Thankfully, she had no such desires.

She placed her hands behind her back and unhooked her solid colored bra, letting it fall to the ground and then removed her panties and flung them with her foot towards the pile of clothes. Sakura stood naked, except for the red stringed necklace with a small pebble like pendent that she carried at all times. She had a few scars all over her body, normally she was able to heal herself before anything permanent developed but once in a while her eyes had failed her and for that she paid dearly. But it was usually her fault.

_It was always my fault_; she corrected herself as her finger tips gently traced the deepest and largest scar on her body. A slice that started an inch under her left breast and went all the way down to her right hip bone.

She preferred not to remember how she got that one.

The second most obvious scar was on her palm. It was ugly and distorted her whole hand, which was why she was grateful she usually wore gloves. But that scar – that scar was a part of the reason she had become so powerful. The skin on her palm had swirled around towards the center like a whirlpool where a little jade poked out. The jade was raw, not altered. It was the reason she mastered a jutsu she had yet to hear anyone mastering. And no one had heard of her and her Mirai.

When Tsunade made a comment about her fighting during the Jonin exams, Sakura waved it off as a gut feeling. She would never tell. Some secrets were better taken to the grave.

Sakura reached into her backpack and got out her bandages and slowly began to bind her breasts tightly to her chest. She was not please about being blessed with C-cups; that was something she could have lived without. But at least she wasn't as 'blossomed' in that area as her mentor.

Then she put on a long sleeve black mesh shirt and a tight black tank top over it. Afterwards, she pulled on her black knee length tights and reached into another zipper in her backpack and retrieved her leg pouch and attached it to her thigh. Then she reached for two thin wrist bands that nested a few hundred poisonous needles inside and placed them on properly; with the needle points going towards her forearm instead of fingers for safety reasons. She wrapped six carefully placed knives around her ankle and then put a belt with a dozen tiny pouches that harnessed most of her medical supplies – mostly common poison cures, since those took too much time to remove with chakra.

Next she put on her ANBU vest, slid her arm and shin guards hastily, and put on her soft flexible ankle boots. She was becoming impatient with how long it took to change her attire.

With an exasperated sigh she looked ahead ten minutes in quick-time; in the blink of an eye she saw all ten minutes flash before her eyes. Noticing that there was no immediate danger, she fixed her hair up into a messy bun that went wild at the ends and placed two chopsticks that were obviously weapons in disguise inside. Then she took out a ratty looking cloak and tonto, the last items in her bag, placed them beside her and filled her messenger bag with the civilian clothes she traveled in and then placed the bag into the backpack.

When she had repacked everything she dropped the backpack on the ground and did a three symbol hand jutsu and that turned it all to ash. Sakura bent down and scooped the dark matter into the palm of her hands and placed it inside the hole she had dug up.

After she closed the hole, she took off her glasses and folded them into her vest pocket and placed the mask over her face. Lastly she bent down and tied the cloak over her body – securing the hood to cover any traces of pink hair and jumped up towards the nearest tree branch with her tonto in her hand, her thumb acting as a trigger at the hilt.

She quickly made her way towards her destination – the Paper Village.

.

…

.

After nine straight hours of running through the forest, she finally sat down on a thick branch for some rest. She closed her eyes for a moment and then suddenly heard a branch snap, immediately she drew her sword and in quick time she looked a half minute ahead.

A deer appeared from the spot where she heard the noise and Sakura relaxed as she blinked back to the present, returning her sword to her scabbard, and she watched the deer come out from behind a tree without any knowledge that its life was in any danger.

Sakura secured her sword behind her back with her belt and reached into her vest pocket to pull out her tiny mission scroll.

"Mahi 3241N53258L" – was written inside the scroll when she unraveled it.

It meant to meet her partner by the Northern part of Mahi Lake at sunset. The mission was a simple scroll retrieval but her and another ANBU Bark were put on assignment for it. Apparently, something had been discovered that required the immediate attention of the Konoha Kage.

Paper Village was small town and mostly made of civilians. It was not equipped with Shinobis that could make it a powerful nation, but it was a longstanding ally of Konoha – one of their first. So when they sent an urgent message, their first, to the Hokage, Tsunade was forced to respond by sending two of the best ANBUs (both with captain titles).

Sakura looked up into the tree branches and leaves which hide the gray sky from her view. She cocked her head to the side trying to calculate the time by the sun's positioning. She determined that she had about three hours before sunset.

She estimated that she could get there in two hours if she rushed but she wished to conserve her chakra. She had been using too much of it already from being paranoid of another attack. The constant use of her Mirai wasn't cheap.

She rolled the scroll back up and stared at it absentmindedly through the holes of her mask.

It was nothing like _her_ scroll.

Nothing.

_Well it wasn't my scroll_, Sakura reasoned internally, but in reality it was, because no one knew about it and she had stolen its contents. So in actuality – it was very much her scroll.

Years ago, she had first set foot in the library that was only allowed to be used by the Hokage and those escorted by the great Kage, therefore the tidiness was Tsunade's responsibility, not others.

But Tsunade was lazier than Shikamaru when it came to certain things and Sakura was willing to do anything that kept her away from everyone. She hated the fact that Ino and Kiba had advanced to Jounin and were teaching in the academy while Shino, Hinata, Tenten, and Neji were preparing for their ANBU exams and rumor had it that Shikamaru was promoted to the high rank of Hunter Nin.

Everyone else was making great strides with their lives, while Sakura was curing colds and giving children their annual shots.

She hated it.

She enjoyed being a medic, but shortening Anko's colds from naked late night runs and curing Genma's hangovers was not exactly what she had in mind. In a time of peace, hospitals were used for petty visits and her usefulness slipped between her fingers like grains of sand. Sakura wanted to be out on the field but she was insecure of her ability since her rejection from her team.

So so so insecure.

Having her mentor question her abilities and placing her a few dozen steps lower than her old teammates had stung her ego and brutally bashed her self esteem.

Tsunade seemed to have noticed the wound she created by removing Sakura from Team Seven, so she began to train with her on a daily basis, forcing her schedule to include Sakura, she had even taught her the sacred Creation Rebirth. It was out of pity Sakura learned it, and slowly she began contemplating giving up her life as a shinobi and becoming a wife of nobody special. She never went on missions; her life was in the hospital and in wallowing. She had often taken to pouring hot candle wax on herself and cutting her body up with knives and pouring salt on the wounds. She always healed the wounds…but she needed visible proof that she was in pain.

Her time in the underground library of the past Kages' had been a blessing that brought her out of her patterns of self destruction. The library was located underground and took up as much room as the whole city above ground did. There were millions of scrolls and most of them were misplaced, so Sakura usually had to open and read the title and sometimes some of the contents to understand where the scroll belonged.

Maybe that was Tsunade's plan after all.

Sakura had spent hours organizing and sneaking peeks into ancient scrolls even after she knew what they were for. She had advanced in the ancient languages in the academy and could read most of the scriptures. Every scroll she read helped fuel her curiosity.

It was in those sneaking peeks that had led to the climax in her life.

Sakura grinned behind her mask as she remembered her raw jade and gold plated scroll. She had found it when she had accidently tipped over the wooden bookshelf that was up against the northern wall – right under the Hokage Mountain. While cursing to herself, Sakura tried to prop it back up but something was stopping her and causing the bookshelf to continually tip over. When she went to examine the wall, she discovered a piece of brick that was protruding out near the floor.

Sakura reasoned that it must have gotten loose from her klutziness and continual shoving of the big wooden shelves. Although, when she kicked the brick forward into the wall, there was something behind it – stopping it. So like the curious kitten she had become, Sakura pushed the bookshelf to the side and squatted down to remove the brick and see what was hidden there.

There, inside the cemented space was the turning point of her life. She removed a large three foot long, heavy scroll from inside and stared at it for what seemed like hours. It was mesmerizing. She had never seen a scroll made of raw jade and gold before.

The jade on her forehead was a chakra induced crystal and she knew the rarity of authentic raw minerals. Rare was an understatement, the scroll itself would probably be able to sustain Konoha financially for a few lifetimes if it were ever sold for its proper price.

But when Sakura held it in her hands the first time, she did not even contemplate selling it, she only wanted to hold it.

It was larger than any scroll in the whole library and she could feel power vibrating out of it. It was whispering words without sound to her and touching her with the hot breath of the secret winds. The patterns of jade and gold on the scroll seemed to change every time she blinked. She would have thought it were genjutsu if she didn't have an internal feeling that was something more – something stronger.

Her mind told her to get Tsunade and her gut told her to put it back.

Something else…some feeling completely incomprehensible told her to open it.

But she couldn't. The seal that kept it shut was so advanced that Sakura didn't remember even reading about it in textbooks. So after hours of just being enchanted by its charm, she gathered the strength she needed to put the scroll back behind the brick and carefully propped the bookshelf up – just as it had been before and tried to go back to organizing.

She thought she could put it behind her.

She thought that she could tell her mentor.

She thought that she would just leave it for those who were more advanced than her to deal with.

She thought wrong.

It was too late, subconsciously she began looking for scrolls on seal breaking and creating.

She learned so much and could probably make seals that no one in Konoha could break and she could probably break seals that no one in Konoha could make.

She was elated at her growing knowledge.

Slowly her mental respect for herself began to increase.

She knew how to break the seal on Naruto and release his fox.

She knew how to remove the Cursed Seal on Sasuke.

She knew how to create seals that were nearly unbreakable to average shinobis.

This elated her beyond belief as she walked home every night to practice making and breaking seals in the privacy of her own home – which of course she had sealed using advanced (but not too advanced) techniques.

All the while, she hadn't told a damn soul.

She congratulated Hinata when the Hyuga told her of the advances of the clan under her rule. She finally laughed at Ino's stories and marveled at Tenten's new weapons. She greeted people with a true smile and began to act normal.

Like a normal girl.

Like a normal medic.

Like everyone expected her to be. The façade of being happy and okay was so much easier to put on when doing something very _very_ wrong.

She had a secret, and it made life a tad bit easier to live in.

Even after organizing the library to Tsunade's satisfaction (the women didn't have high expectations, she only wished to see the floors and walk without stepping on scrolls), the teen continued to return there at nights just so she could keep studying when the Hokage was passed out drunk. She began to bring a notebook and take notes, writing down the information she found fascinating but never intended to use.

Never.

Why? Because she was a medic and nothing else.

She would never be a worthy kunoichi, but she did want to learn.

Learning made her feel special, it was her private advancement in life and it made her feel better.

She didn't pay attention to the fact that she was mostly reading on seal breaking and creating scrolls, she pretended that the scroll behind the brick didn't peak her interest.

But eventually, she had to stop lying to herself because she began to dream of the scroll nightly. It called to her. It sank to her. It cuddled her when she was lonely. It wanted her. She wanted it. She had to open it.

After months of endless studying and copying, many scrolls for her own private collection, she found the scroll that revealed how to break the seal and open her secret gold and jade scroll that was patiently waiting for her. Coaxing her.

The technique was awfully difficult to accomplish and the hand movements were mind numbing. Her mind screamed at her to leave the scroll alone – a scroll guarded with such a powerful seal was not meant to be read by a weak girl.

But that only encouraged her further.

Logic and reason had left her mind when she first laid eyes on the enchanted mysteriously hidden item.

After countless more months of memorizing and practicing the hand movements and chakra flow that was needed both in the body and in the seal she decided to try to break it one night.

It was just once.

Just once she promised herself.

Her home experiments were done on her journal and kitchen pots and pans and old Chinese food…she just wanted to try it once on something special.

She thought it would make her feel more than just existing and that's all she really wanted.

Sakura prepared for the complicated jutsu she was about to perform by eating six soldier pills, clearing an open space in the middle of the library, and making sure she was at a hundred percent chakra. She had debated on going out to a meadow or finding a clearing in the forest to perform the jutsu, but everything was too risky. The library was the only place where she wouldn't get caught unless she burned it down…and even if that happened it might be a while before anyone discovered and of course there was the high possibility of her being dead by that time.

Around midnight she lit a dainty candle beside her and placed the scroll in front of her. She stared at it blankly, trying to comprehend the consequences her actions might have, but the beautiful jade had her captured and lulled all her fears away with its constantly changing patterns.

It whispered promises with words that the tongue could not speak…so Sakura obeyed the unsaid and forbidden and prepared to open it. She wanted to hear what it wanted to tell her because if she waited any longer it may drive her insane.

Sakura concentrated, making the first three symbols with her fingers and at the last symbol she changed the chakra flow of her body, reversing it. Changing the natural flow of chakra in her body was a very risky procedure which could have paralyzed her body; thankfully medic ninjas used the skill anytime they experienced a blood clot or a chakra blockage.

Then she made the next five symbols and paused as she reversed the flow of chakra inside her body again. With a deep breath, she made the next fifty-one hand symbols as quickly as her hands and fingers could move while flooding the scroll with her own chakra. Lastly, she began to make the chakra patterns around the scroll that she had put to memory and then conducted the final twenty hand symbols while changing the chakra pattern every symbol – creating an almost typhoon effect inside her body.

The strain was almost unbearable.

_Almost_.

When she finished her hands fell to her side – they had become deadweight as she gasped for air. She had been drained of most of her chakra and exerted extreme conditions onto her body in repetitive succession. She was drenched in sweat and her body pulsated with a soreness she had never experienced before.

But none of that mattered.

The scroll clicked open.

She had done it. She had opened it.

But she immediately knew it wasn't enough, it was never enough to just open it. She continued to stare at it for maybe minutes or maybe hours – she never knew. Carefully she pushed the little amount of chakra she had left into her arms and fingers. Eventually, slowly, and with the aid of the light from a dyeing candle, she unrolled the scroll.

When she touched the smooth and feather-like paper, she felt something strange overcome her body. Something added to her chakra. She knew of her healing chakra, killing chakra, life chakra, power chakra, and energy chakra but what the scroll gave her was something else. Something foreign.

Once she saw its contents she was immediately consumed by darkness so black that it would have dissipated any form of light.

Sakura had awoken the next day or maybe it was a few days later, she never found out. Her face was plastered against the scroll and she had been curled up into a fetal position. When the memories of her experiment returned, she quickly shot up, wincing in pain, and looked franticly at the scroll – it held nothing that she remembered. None of the funny patterns she could have sworn she saw the night before. It was blank except for a simple message that seemed to disappear as Sakura read it.

"Color is the only price of tomorrow."

Her eyes scanned the paper – a blank paper in a golden jaded scroll. Something was wrong. Very wrong. It was all wrong. Sakura's mind went to a frenzied panic as she jumped up, ignoring all the pain in her very sore legs and paced back and forth around the blank scroll.

She began to hyperventilate and would have vomited up if her stomach had any contents worth throwing up. What had she done?

The scroll didn't ease her.

Her curiosity and obsessive desires was replaced with shame and regret.

After the rational taxation hit, then physical acuteness occurred. She realized how sore she was, and how breathing ached her chest in unnatural ways. She brought her hand to her chest and conducted a full physical on the minimal amount of chakra that flowed through her body in a pattern foreign to her. Her own chakra signature was changed. She looked for any signs of infection because she knew something was inside her – something that didn't belong.

It was wrong. All wrong. Very wrong.

But the moment her right hand touched her side she gasped and looked into her open palm. Her skin was twisted and disfigured as though it had been burned and melted into a spiral. In the center was a raw jade gem surrounded by bits of dry blood. Just looking at the gem caused Sakura to immediately calm down.

Her heart rate decreased considerably and her lungs began to take in air in slow controlled breathes. She would be okay…somehow she knew that she would be. The jade was promising her that and for some unfathomable reason she believed it.

She sat back down in front of the open scroll and stared down at her palm for an incomprehensible amount of time, probably half a day – maybe more. She could feel her body change but she didn't want to stop it – she didn't want to go back to normal.

She didn't like normal anymore.

She liked the comfort the jade brought her. She no longer felt the inwardly pain she had suffered with for so long.

It was a mark – a promise.

It was something that she would never be able to explain. She knew what she had to do, whether it was the right thing to do or not was still up for debate, but she did it anyway. She hid the jade scroll back into the wall and destroyed the scroll that revealed how to open it. She also destroyed some other scrolls about seal making and breaking…but those were for selfish reasons. She needed to seal parts of her mind away, and she couldn't have just anyone breaking them and taking her secrets.

If someone knew how to release and control the tailed beasts….

It was enough the Atakusuki's were kidnapping and extracting the tailed demons, for them to have complete and utter command of them would cause chaos. Hell…if the elder's got their hands on it, Danzou would surely wish to use it for his evil dictatorial central motives.

She shuddered at the thought and made sure that the scrolls which could damage humanity were well hidden since those held a seal of indestructibility.

The young medic knew she had unlocked something within the jade scroll but she didn't know or understand what….all she knew was that every time she looked at the jade…a calm feeling overcame her and it was all okay.

The next few days went by smoothly, Tsunade had reprimanded Sakura for working too hard in the library and hospital and ordered her to go home and get some rest. So Sakura did just that, she went home to rest and spent some time with her family that never got to see her.

She had dinner with her mother, father, and grandfather which happened to be a quiet occasion where her father asked more about her friends than about her. As always, while washing the dishes with her mother, the elder women had to reassure her daughter that her father loved and adored her as she was.

"You're father and I are very proud of you. He knows you're a good medic."

Sakura sighed and looked at her mother in disbelief, and in that second she felt a similar thread of awkward change she had felt in the library. A tiny change that she dismissed. Like when your calf suddenly itches or a sudden stitch at your side. Nothing she thought was out of the ordinary as she bitterly replied to her mother's soothing words, "A nobody. That's what father thinks I am."

Her mother froze and stared at her in shock and immediately Sakura wished to take back the words and when she blinked her mother was back to washing the dishes.

Sakura stared dumbfounded at her, thinking her mother was ignoring her, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean that," she lied.

"Mean what, honey?" Sakura's mother looked at her daughter in honest surprise.

"What I just said?" The pink haired kunoichi raised her eyebrow.

"Sweetie, are you feeling okay? You haven't said a thing to me since dinner."

"A nobody?" Sakura asked terrified as she began to visibly shake – maybe she was losing her mind.

"A nobody, what are you talking about dear?"

"N-nothing…nothing," Sakura offered her mother a smile while still staring at her with suspicion.

Sakura opened her eyes from her little daydream and looked out into the forest as she remembered the first time she was able to look into the future and she hadn't even realized she had done it.

Life was simple back then….she mused.

She didn't know what would happen and life still had its surprises.

Now – rarely anything came as a surprise to Sakura.

She sighed and looked down at the ground where the deer had nestled under a nearby tree.

"You're thinking about once upon a time too, eh?" Sakura asked the deer who didn't think she was important enough to acknowledge.

A swift cold breeze blew at her and she took it as a sign to move. Once more, she used her special chakra to activate her Mirai and look ahead to see if she was going to come across trouble but the path seemed clear for the next twenty five minutes. She got to her feet and gave a feeble smile to the deer she had mistaken as a threat and jumped off the branch and onto another.

* * *

A/N: Sorry for the slowness...the story will pick up soon. :)

Thank you for reading and commenting! 3


	3. The Scroll in the Tree

Sakura arrived to the designated area moments before the sun began to set on the western horizon and immediately noticed her partner's silhouette. He was doing a terrible job of hiding in the patch of nearby trees. Although, she suspected he really wasn't trying to be discrete, especially since she could feel his Byakugan watching her.

She landed on the branch beside him, happy to know that he was her partner for the mission. He was one of the few people she was comfortable working with. He didn't make her feel as though she had to explain herself to him – at least not often enough to cause any distrust.

She had always envied Neji's ability to remain cool and collective at almost any given situation but she supposed that was what other's now saw her as. Cool and collective.

Anyone would be cool and collective when they could see fifty-two minutes into the future with the exception of a few uncontrollable visions.

Neji and her became close, not emotionally of course but they both trusted each other while they worked together in Branch. She liked him just enough to care to the extent that if he ever betrayed her she wouldn't get hurt. She didn't dare like anyone more than that.

He was the only one that did not display surprise or give any form of congratulations when she passed the Jounin or ANBU exams. He just accepted it.

And that was all she wanted.

Acceptance.

Neji smiled behind his mask as Sakura landed beside him, causing the branch to ruffle slightly under the extra weight. She was his favorite person to work with on any mission. She no longer spoke needlessly and had become a very efficient fighter which caused her to become an amazing partner. Also, being one of the greatest medic ninjas in all the lands didn't hurt either.

"Hello," he spoke clearly through his mask as Sakura offered him a coy nod.

He looked at her with his activated Byakugan, and noticed the change in chakra. Her chakra control was outstanding but it wasn't the control he was examining, it was that tiny stream of flowing dark chakra that nestled itself behind her eyes. He never found out what that chakra was – he wasn't even sure Sakura knew.

Nejia had always been tempted to ask her blatantly what happened to cause her metamorphose from the old Sakura he distastefully remembered to the new Sakura, whose existence he appreciated. Undeniably, he was slightly suspicious about her newly refined abilities. He had once mentioned it when they were on their second mission together – artifact retrieval during the start the international peace treaty.

"What is your ability, Sakura?" He asked as he leaned against the tree opposite to her. The two ANBUs were camping out in a dense forest, waiting till it was safe from scouting ninjas. They had both disguised their chakra as small animals so not to draw any attention or exert extra concentration in feigning chakra invisibility.

He hoped Sakura would answer his question without feeling uneasy because it had been eating at him for a while and very few things 'ate' at Neji Hyuuga. What was it that made her perfect? What was it that made her seemingly predict the enemies' attacks and always perform the best strategies even if they seemed to be filled with loopholes? She was like an improved version of Shikamaru.

"Ability?" She glanced up as she paused the chakra exercise that she was conducting with her fingers.

"It's like you could see the future," He replied looking down at her.

A few minutes of silenced passed between them before Sakura responded looking at him with an expression he wasn't able to read, "Wouldn't that be nice…" To Neji it sounded like that statement should have been wishful but his ears received a monotone message.

"Your eyes are black," he continued to push the subject, hoping to draw out information from her. Maybe her eyes were they key.

"What?" She turned to look at him. Her onyx black eyes stared at him with no emotion and without his Byakugan he wouldn't have been able to find her pupils.

"Your eyes, they are black," he repeated himself even though he knew she heard him the first time.

"Oh," was Sakura's only response before she went back to twirling chakra strings between her fingers.

And that was the end of that.

Nejia had never mentioned what he saw with his Byakugan or anything else he noticed about the secretive konnichi. He would never betray her trust like that.

Neji took off his Byakugan and looked sadly into the sunset, his expression hidden behind his mouse mask.

"Sometimes I think that's the only beautiful thing left in this world," he spoke into the chilling air, causing a fog to appear in front of his face.

"What is?" His partner asked confused.

"Sunsets. The colors, it's very…" he paused looking for the appropriate word, but he couldn't think of it and Sakura didn't offer any assistance so he let that statement stand as it was.

Little did Neji know that Sakura had become color blind after only two weeks of training and practicing with the Mirai. She could only see black, white, and different shades of gray – color was lost somewhere in the unlockable past.

Sakura stared out at the black and white sunset and didn't find anything special about it. She tried to remember what sunsets were supposed to look like but her mind couldn't retrieve any images of color. It didn't bother her. She wouldn't give up her Mirai for the most breathtaking sunset in the world.

"The Village leader is expecting us," Nejia said catching Sakura's attention as she looked away from the mesh of gray in the horizon.

She nodded and they both leapt from branch to branch until they came to the pathetically constructed gate entrance. It was made of seven foot tall wooden panels that had holes caused by natural decay and crooked nails caused by poor craftsmanship. They both pulled their hoods as far down as possible, so as to not reveal their masks to any onlookers.

No one ever had any interest in the Paper Village besides trade. Neji landed in front of the gate first, followed by Sakura who walked behind him silently. Neji never understood that about Sakura and tried to cast it off as an old habit but anytime he worked with other ANBUs, they always walked side by side. Sakura was the only one who ever walked behind them, and in his opinion she deserved, more than most, to walk ahead. He would even let her walk ahead of him if she ever tried.

But he didn't voice his opinion as a guard leaned from the square arch entrance. He nodded knowingly aware of the ANBU visitors and asked to see their paperwork. Neji supplied the documents for both Sakura and himself and raised his hood for a moment so the guard would be certain that he was not being fooled.

"The elder is in the house on the west side. He asked you not to walk through the village," the guard explained as Neji lowered his hood once more.

The village streets were empty through Sakura's eyes but she understood the request. Although, they came on the mission dressed as ANBU, they were still required not to raise suspicion amongst the unknowing villagers.

The village was a peaceful and they were incapable of protecting themselves from rogue ninjas. The only thing that kept the major pillagers away was the alliance with Konoha. There was a Konoha checkpoint 10 miles South that would come to aid if any such emergency occurred. For the villagers to see ANBUs walking down the street would certainly cause a panic.

When the guard handed the papers back to Neji both of them disappeared in front of his eyes. He blinked again, completely stunned by their uncanny speed.

Seconds later they appeared in front of the elder's home. Neji knocked and once more Sakura stayed behind him as they waited for an answer.

He pushed the irked feeling aside with Sakura not standing beside him and turned on his Byakugan as he heard soft footsteps come closer to the door. It was a simple house, with only the necessities, made of wood, everything hand carved and there were no hidden weapons. The house contained three people and none of them were threatening what so ever. His surroundings were safe as well. Everyone in the village was either eating dinner or washing dishes from dinner. It seemed to be a very family oriented town and it had a relaxing effect on Neji. Towns that lived in peace without shinobi clans always interested him. Maybe in another life…

The door creaked open and he turned off his Byakugan.

"Ahhh," an old lady stared at the guests in front of her. She quickly bowed and only Sakura returned the greeting.

"Come in, please, come in," the woman said side stepping away from the entrance. She was a well rounded woman with short gray hair that was pulled back into a pony tail. She had small eyes and stout chin, yet her voice was sweet and gentle like a lullaby.

Neji stepped in, followed by Sakura who was about to use her Mirai to escape the present but before she could an old man cleared his throat and for some reason Sakura decided to remain in the present. She looked at the old man who couldn't have been younger than seventy. He had a gray balding head with a long white beard and his face was just full of creases and wrinkles. But his eyes…Sakura looked into his eyes and had fallen in love with them. To her they had no color, but somehow there was an intense emotion in them. She internally wondered what color the old man's eyes were and how they looked in the glimmering sunlight. Were they yellow like the sun? Or green like the grass was supposed to be? Maybe they were blue like the ocean…

"Welcome. Please have a seat," he motioned to the dining table that he and a younger woman sat at.

The older woman, who was probably his wife, led them towards the small round wooden table they others were sitting at.

Neji hesitated before taking a seat and Sakura knew he wanted to put up a sound barrier. They had worked together long enough to learn what each one was comfortable with when conducting a mission.

"I am putting up a sound barrier," Sakura said as she quickly made the hand motions, created a pattern within her inner chakra and felt a soft wall of chakra encompass the house.

Her sound barriers were nearly unbreakable and anyone who did enter after its creation would be deaf to all sounds as long as he or she remained inside.

Everyone sat down and the ANBUs stared at the man through the holes of their masks.

"May you please lower your hoods?" he asked in a deep throated voice.

Both ninja's obliged.

"What about your masks?" The younger girl with brown hair and round cheeks asked coyly. Sakura noticed the same chakra pattern between all three members and solidified her theory that they were a family.

"With the urgency you declared of this mission, we cannot take our masks off," Neji spoke in an authoritative tone.

The older man nodded and the two women stared in awe at the strength behind Neji's captivating voice.

"Yes…well my name is Kumi, this is my wife Victoria and our daughter Tori…I assume you will not share you real names," he paused for a moment to have his opinion confirmed by the silence of his guests, "A few nights ago, we had been digging about a mile to the south of here for minerals to make paper with," he began his tale.

Sakura gave a knowing nod, the Paper Village had produced the best parchment anywhere – it was the same paper that was used in most summoning and sealing scrolls.

"We found a large cluster of Amethyst located two feet under a willow tree."

_Amethyst? _

He cleared his throat again as he rubbed his knees, "Our men continued digging because of course – you understand Amethyst's qualities?"

He spoke to Sakura, his eyes knowing something that his lips would not speak.

Sakura nodded stoutly, "Chakra regeneration."

The old man gave an expected smile and before he continued Sakura spoke again, "but that's only in its raw form. Tampered relics or altered jewelry containing amethyst do not contain the same properties."

The look the old man gave the two ANBUs told them….it was in its raw form.

Sakura internally gasped but her body made no sign of surprise. She couldn't believe she was going to see another precious stone in its raw form. Beside the scroll's jade and her palm, she had never seen any other raw gems. Most people lived their whole life just reading about them in stories.

"May we see it?" Neji asked.

"Of course, I wish to discuss on it further later but first…" Kumi cleared his throat again and stopped rubbing his withering old knees that Sakura noticed to be suffering in pain, "I wish to tell you more. We discovered a scroll very deep in the ground. It was twisted with the root of the tree so tightly that we had to cut off the tree roots. We are unable to open the scroll, but it is covered with gold and Amethyst," he turned to his wife momentarily, "Dear, go get it please. I can't describe the damn thing."

The old woman nodded and got up offering her guests a respectful smile as she walked behind them towards the bedroom.

Neji subconsciously turned on his Byakugan and watched her reach inside a long drawer by the vanity mirror as the old man continued speaking.

"The tree had died almost instantly. I remember seeing that tree since I was a little boy; it had always been around…and now because of this scroll we removed…its dead."

Sakura understood the omen the old man saw in the dead tree. After all, trees were sacred to the village.

The old woman returned with a large scroll in arms and Sakura could see her muscles trembling to just hold it. She placed it on the table with a loud thud. Neji and Sakura only stared at it, Sakura through her medic eyes and Neji through his Byakugan eyes.

"Do you see anything?" The old man questioned as his wife stat next to him again. "The patterns…they keep changing."

"It's sealed," Neji stated and Sakura could tell that he was taken aback by the complexity of the seal but she doubted he saw everything there was to see.

She on the other hand immediately recognized the seal and all the markings but remained silent. She knew how to break it. To Sakura's eyes, since she couldn't see the purple or gold – the scroll looked like an exact duplicate of hers. It was changing its motif subtly every passing moment. It had the thousands of chakra kanji markings which were a part of its seal – again just like her scroll and its shape and weight seemed like an exact duplicate.

"Can you break it?" The girl asked staring at Neji's mouse mask.

"I cannot. Neither of us specializes in seals, but we have shinobis in Konoha that probably can."

_No they can't_…Sakura thought to herself, _I destroyed all the scrolls that could even hint at how to break the seal on this scroll. _

"Would you please take this scroll from us?" the old man begged.

Sakura activated her Mirai, making the decision to begin to unsealing the scroll….her vision went pitch black momentarily and she widened her eyes as her black and white vision slowly came back to her.

Neji had removed his backpack which was hidden under his cloak and was already placing the scroll inside the bag when Sakura came to.

She stared in utter shock as her Mirai failed to show her anything when it came to the scroll.

Her mind rushed at mind numbing speeds and she began to think of decisions she should make so she could look into the outcomes in quick time, but suddenly Sakura spoke, unable to control her words, "may we see the tree?"

The man remained expressionless as the women at the table looked quizzically at her.

"Of course, but right now the vill –"

"We will be disguised," Sakura interrupted.

One behind a brick.

One under a tree.

_What did this scroll hold?_ Sakura questioned internally. She doubted Neji had any idea the power he was carrying in his bag and Sakura didn't want to act without seeing the outcomes. She wasn't used to not seeing.

"Very well, it's on the way to our warehouse anyway," the old man said as both ninjas got up and did the hand symbols for genjutsu disguise and with a puff of smoke; they looked like a normal village couple with forgettable faces.

"Wow," the younger girl stared at them in awe.

"Stay here," The old man said to his wife and daughter as he tried to get up with the help of the table and his cane.

"Sir, may I please look at your legs?" Sakura asked stepping towards Kumi.

"Ex-excuse me?" his wife asked in shock.

"I think you have arthritis. I can't remove it since it's at such a late stage, but I can decrease the pain and irritation," Sakura answered simply. She couldn't keep the medic in her away.

Neji smirked under his disguise and behind his mask. Sakura still wanted to cure the world like she did when she first became a medic. Although, somehow, after losing her team she had lost her passion for healing but Neji noticed, since she became an ANBU the spark was back – every single wound and cough became important again. He had even heard that if she was in Konoha, she would visit Genma on Saturday mornings just to cure his hangover.

The old man sat back down and welcomed the medic to do whatever she deemed necessary to make his pain go away. Sakura kneeled before him and again Neji twitched in agitation – she could have just bent down and touched his knees or sat next to him. No, instead Sakura kneeled before him.

The women leaned over the table to get a better look.

Her hands began to glow as she emitted a light blue chakra towards his knees and he watched in admiration through his Byakugan eyes as she worked to restore his joints' health. Soon her hands glowed the familiar light green that most medics had and fifteen seconds later, she smiled and said, "Done."

The old man thanked her and she bowed down to him after standing up. Neji frowned at Sakura, who just brushed him off. Sakura sighed internally as she noticed Neji's aggravated aura. He could be so impatient sometimes. She moved aside to let the old man stand up, knowing that he would feel at least twenty years younger.

Kumi stood up carefully and the wonder in his eyes needed no color for Sakura to understand the gratitude. He tossed his cane aside and smiled so widely that Sakura was sure his facial muscles would hurt afterwards, "You are outstanding, kunoichi," he said happily.

"Thank you," Sakura replied courtly.

"Oh my," the old man said taking unnecessary steps around his home, "this is…outstanding."

Neji cleared his throat and Kumi looked at the ANBU male apologetically.

"Let's go. We will be back soon," the old man said turning to his family as they headed outside to give them a wave goodbye.

His wife was looking at her husband in complete shock. Just two hours ago Kumi was saying how he felt as though he'd never be able to walk again and then began talking about death. The Shinigami was loaming over his shoulder he always said. It always saddened her anytime her husband got into one of those moods and she was worried he would exhaust himself before his guests even arrived. But now he had thrown down his cane and walked out of the house like the young man he once was.


	4. Happy

"The tree is by the warehouse where we keep the minerals to mend the paper with. We have to go through another gate to get there." Kami said walking with an extra kick in every step. He hadn't feel so rejuvenated since his thirty-fifth birthday when he visited a world renowned spa that had cost half his savings.

They made the rest of the trip through the village in silence until they neared another weakly constructed gate. The guard recognized the Elder and his eyes widened to see him without his cane and he even had to rub his eyes to make sure that it wasn't a hallucination.

Kami smiled at the guards reaction and was about to praise the young Kunoichi beside him when Neji cleared his throat reminding him they were in disguise.

"Oh, where are my manners. Tichi, may we please pass. I have some business to attend to."

Tichi nodded and unlocked the gate and granted the three of them entrance. They walked without speaking until Kami was sure that Tichi would be unable to hear their conversation.

"I have a question." The old man stated. "Are you two happy being ninjas? I've always been fascinated by the shinobi lifestyle."

"It's our job." Neji responded immediately.

Sakura remained silent.

_Am I happy? _

She looked out into the gray darkness that surrounded her.

_Am I? _

She looked back at the old man and his eyes glanced at hers. Piercing something through her. Something she couldn't understand.

_Am I happy?_ Sakura asked herself again and she couldn't find an answer.

She couldn't find anything expect some rule in some ANBU training guide which reprimanded making emotionally driven decisions. But happiness wasn't a hindering emotion…

She couldn't remember the last time she smiled or laughed or even felt a glimmer of hope for tomorrow. Happiness…was somewhere…buried deep inside…

_Back in team seven_, her mind whispered and she felt sadness engulf her body but she promptly stopped those emotions as a rotting tree overtook her vision. She didn't have time to pity herself on who she once was – she had a tree to examine.

She focused her chakra seeing eyes and concentrated as they approached the dyeing tree. It was difficult for Sakura to see at night without the aid of chakra since shades would be completely indistinguishable otherwise. She remained two steps behind the two men and began to slow down her pace. She was completely uncertain of the tree before her as she tried to rationalize what happened to it.

All living things had chakra.

Plants, animals, humans, birds, fish…everything.

But this tree.

It had chakra but it also…produced chakra.

Under extreme circumstances, humans can produce a massive jolt of chakra with the aid of adrenalin and life energy…but otherwise humans regained chakra through rest and nutrition. The tree…the tree was dying but living at the same time. It was like a beating heart within a corpse.

Everyone stopped in front of it and Sakura carefully stepped aside and walked around the tree. She examined every detail of it as she carefully stepped over all the protruding roots that weaved through the ground. Its bark was a darker shade than the other trees around and the branches held no leaves. She looked down.

There were no remnants of fallen leaves anywhere surrounding the tree.

"Do you see anything?" Neji asked.

"One second," Sakura asked as she activated the first stage of her Mirai as she decided to break off a piece of wood. Nothing happened. Sakura returned to the present and then decided to fill the tree up with her chakra.

Something happened in the future.

The tree exploded and all its branches and broken pieces of bark launch at her stabbing her and piercing through her skin and into her vital organs with excellent accuracy. Sakura returned to the present with a loud gasped and took a step back, terror was written all over her eyes.

"What is it?" Neji asked activating his Byakugan as soon as he saw Sakura's disguise jutsu undo itself. But he only saw a force field of Sakura's Chakra around herself as if protecting herself from a physical attack. He examined the tree and saw nothing out of the ordinary.

"Nothing," Sakura said sternly as sweat beat from every pore of her body. She quickly summoned her remaining chakra and put back her disguise.

_What happened?_ Sakura questioned herself as she stared in disbelief. She had felt an aura of hatred and anger surround the tree and it seemed to beam all the darkness towards Sakura.

_Are you angry at me for seeing the future?_ Sakura whispered wordlessly.

The tree, of course, didn't respond, instead she heard a crow kaw in the distance.

_Great. _

_Bad omen. _

"Let me show you the stones," The old man said after waiting what he believed was enough time. He did not notice anything except the girl had dropped her disguise for less than two seconds. He was sure everyone's jutsu would falter sometimes – no one was perfect after all. Little did he know genjutsu was Sakura's specialty and she did not falter in it.

Both ninjas followed the old man and Sakura gave one fleeting look at the tree as goosebumps crept up her spine.

Something was wrong.

She took a deep breath as she tried to calm herself. She had barely any chakra left, looking into the future had taken a toll on her and she was near fainting but she had to force herself to stay conscious. Normally she would only look into the future during serious missions and she usually never went beyond twenty minutes in the first stage because of the chakra drain. During fights she would enter the second stage which was more beneficial to both her and her chakra. But since her morning attack, she had been jumpy and terrified of a second attack and kept jumping into the future.

"I do not know how to activate an Amethyst," The old man said opening the door.

"No lock?" Sakura questioned.

"No one else knows that there is something worth locking. They had all convinced themselves that it was just purple rock…not Amethyst," The old man replied smugly as he led them inside.

Sakura gasped at the mound of Amethyst up against the wall. She literally couldn't believe it.

She could feel the shock radiating off Neji as well.

"This can make your village prosper for generations to come," Sakura mumbled.

"Yes, and this is another reason why I needed your assistance. We wish to trade it with outside villages, but we do not wish to have…umm…"

"I understand," Sakura said, cutting Kami off, "You do not have the forces to prevent anyone from pillaging your village for the jewels."

"And Konoha does," Neji finished.

"We of course would like to give you some as a present for being our allies and helping us declare our independence from the Root Village all those years ago."

"You want us to help sell these," Sakura said bluntly.

"Yes, for a tax, of course, we'd be willing to pay."

"We have to tell our Hokage and then you will have an answer," Neji said glancing at Sakura who was still staring at the gems with wild eyes.

"Please take some with you. To prove my honesty to the Hokage," Kami begged, "And please, miss, take some for yourself. Consider it payment for my knee."

Sakura nodded as she walked over to the tiny shapes of amethyst. Somewhere in clusters and some were shaped like diamonds; many were still connected to their rock core. Sakura picked up a small broken rock which had vibrant amethyst crystals sticking out and then she picked up two small tiny gems shaped like diamonds.

When she touched the jewels, she felt their accent properties and almost trembled from the connection she received. It was almost like her jade…but not.

To her…the Amethyst did not whisper any promises…it did something else. Something that Sakura could not understand yet.

Sakura had a feeling her jade was at least partially awake; the Amethysts in front of her were all dormant. She had read about gems being used in the ancient times. Emeralds, Amethysts, Alexandrite, Granit….and the million more, all used to accomplish what humans could not make chakra do.

"We will go back to our village and you will hear from us soon," Neji said declaring this mission complete.

The old man nodded knowingly.

"Thank you very much." Sakura bowed deeply and Neji only bent his head at Kami.

"I hope to hear from you soon. You can see your way out, right?"

They nodded, and the old man began to turn, but then stopped and looked at the two ninjas.

He stared at Sakura intensely. "You have eyes…eyes that don't belong to you," He whispered softly as he stared at her coal colored orbs, "You should have happy eyes," He said smiling as he turned, "Oh what I wouldn't do to be young again."

They watched him go and waited until the guard had reopened the gate for him before they disappeared into the night to head back to Konoha.

Sakura had to strain her eyes to be able to see all the tree branches that were safe to jump on. If she hadn't been feeling so weak, her vision wouldn't have even phased her but with her weakening in chakra it seemed as though the world got darker.

Blacker.

"I need rest," Sakura whispered as Neji nodded and they derailed from their original path and into a semi clearing half a mile away.

"We'll rest here the night," Neji said jumping off a branch and then kicked off from a tree to land on the ground with Sakura following his lead.

Sakura stifled a small yawn and leaned her back against the tree and slid down till her butt hit the ground.

She desperately wanted to look ahead, to see if they'd be safe for the next hour but her eye lids closed before she could even try to do anything but breathe and exist.

"I'll take the first watch," Neji whispered to himself as he watched Sakura fall into an instant state of unconscious sleep.

He activated his Byakugan and examined his surroundings. They were safe.

The Paper Village was in neutral grounds and no one came here except civilians, and no civilians would even consider going through a dense forest in the middle of the night.

He relaxed and with normal eyes locked on Sakura.

Then he began to do what he always did when he found himself alone and void of sane company….he began to overanalyze.

She was so…something. He wasn't sure what to call it. He had never noticed her before she had risen in the ranks, hell, he barely acknowledged her when she was on team seven. He wasn't ashamed to admit that.

That's how it was.

There was Kakashi Hatake the legendary copy ninja who loved to read porn and never seemed to have a care in the world except to keep his team together. Naruto Uzumaki– the wacky, crazy, overly emotional orphan who couldn't tell right from wrong or left and had the legendary Fox demon within him. Saskue Uchiha – the cold hearted, vengeful Sharingan wielder who was emotionally scarred for life. Sai – the member of Root who was an amazing artist, excellent fighter, and failed miserably at social interactions but his perseverance was admirable..

Slowly, as he thoughts dwelled on Team Seven, he realized why he couldn't imagine Sakura with them.

She was a no one.

She had no personality, no hardships, no triumphs, no change –

No change until she began to rise in the ranks. She seemed to change from a No One to a Ninja in that time period and it all seemed like a blur to him.

She had become cold and collective and rarely spoke more than necessary. She was no longer a child that couldn't handle anything and needed constant protection. She was a capable adult ninja. Everything about her changed, but most of all her eyes changed. He wasn't sure if he liked that so much but…what the hell did he care?

He shrugged to himself.

He didn't.

But his mind didn't calm the thoughts of his partner…it only intensified them.

Neji thought it was strange and it even irked him in almost every occasion how Sakura seemed to belittle herself any chance she got. He'd seen her in the heat of battle. He'd seen how she moved and attacked with deadly accuracy. He'd seen the way a certain chakra consumed her body when she fought at her best.

He knows.

But still…how can someone like that…someone who would probably be a challenge for him to defeat walk behind an old cripple and bow so low to people who didn't deserve it. How could she still act as though everyone else was still better than her?

He stared at her as she slept, trying to find her soul amiss the mass of skin, muscle and bones. Something that explained her to him. To just let him know.

He tried to imagine, what it must have been like in her shoes. To have been replaced with another medic when she was one of the most skilled in the village and have to watch her own team go on without her. He had heard from Lee and Tenten of how Sakura mourned and cried and how helpless they felt.

But what could they do? She was a hindrance back then.

Now…now he was grateful to have her as a partner.

It amazed him how a bookworm like her had become such a powerful ally.

He remembered a few years back while returning from a relatively easy mission; he walked in on her training for her ANBU exams in a meadow by the eastern mountains that protected their village.

She was staring out to who knows where, just concentrating deeply. He felt her chakra, that strange chakra she possessed, engulf her whole body as she remained completely still and tense.

He just watched her for an unnumbered amount of time and he saw the strain she was putting on her body just staying still. It was as though she was holding a bolder that weighed a ton her shoulders.

Then suddenly she jumped at least seventeen meters into the air and land with a soft thud. Most of her weight was on her left knee with her right leg extended out towards the mountain – her heel digging into the dirt ground. A moment later, the whole mountain shattered.

The _ENTIRE_ mountain.

She had blasted a mountain without even touching it.

His eyes widened and he froze. Unable to even comprehend what he saw, and again she returned to her previous position of standing still. Once more, her special chakra rushed through her body but this time she only stood there for a moment and then walked slowly towards the broken mountain. He didn't know what he expected her to do, but it certainly wasn't what she did. Sakura began to put the mountain back together.

She healed the mountain.

Dust by dust, rock by rock, shattered piece by shattered piece.

He had left then, thinking what she was doing was a lost cause, but when he returned again a few days later. Haruno was still in the clearing but that time she was practicing with a clone of hers.

And the mountain was there.

Just as it had been before she shattered it.

That was the first time he was impressed and had taken a serious notice of Sakura.

Neji, again remained hidden, as he watched her play with her clone. He activated his Byakugan and examined her and her clone. It was attached to Sakura's chakra so she would not disappear with a few hits – the clone became like a mirror of Sakura's strength. As long as Sakura hit her clone, and her clone was attached with her chakra, she would feel the hit too. He understood why Sakura was inflicting pain on herself.

She didn't have anyone else to train with. There wasn't anyone else that would help build her tolerance to physical pain.

He watched her and her clone go at each other. Sakura was of course in complete control but it seemed as though her clone had been preprogrammed. They were doing different fighting styles and with intense curiosity, he tried to remember what fighting style the clone was performing.

Then it hit him.

It was Sasuke Uchiha's fighting style.

And that also became the day was when he respected her.

He didn't see her again till about half a year later; he wasn't a stalker and didn't want to visit her training ground. He wasn't Naruto, and Sakura and him weren't friends, he had no reason to even speak to her.

The next time he saw her was in the hospital when he had gotten injured on a mission. He noticed her bright green eyes had become a dark smoky brown and her gentle childlike face became colder, narrower, more mature.

"Hello Neji," She greeted him with an icy voice as she picked up his bleeding arm into her hands.

He didn't flinch but he felt a sharp pain from her touch but immediately she released numbing chakra into his whole arm from his fingertips to shoulder. He didn't thank her as she let go of his blood crusted arm.

"I need to clean the wound first," she said as her tone remained the same. She reached for some open drawers at the end of the room and got out a towel and anesthetic.

He was surprised as he watched her work. She didn't make small talk or even really look at him. It was like her mind was someplace else but apparently that didn't hinder her performance as a medic in the least bit.

She had made his arm good as new in under five minutes. It took longer for most medics to heal a wound half the size.

"Thank you Sakura."

She nodded and began to walk away.

"Hey Sakura," Neji called for her, and Sakura stopped to turn and look at him questioningly.

He didn't even know what he wanted to say at first but then it came out of his mouth smoothly, "Good luck on the ANBU exams."

The corners of her mouth lifted slightly into an almost smile. "Thank you," She spoke softly; she sounded like water…not ice in that statement.

"If you ever want to train, I'd love to work with you," Neji added – to his own surprise.

He saw a flicker of a spark in Sakura's eyes at his words, but it was gone as soon as it appeared. She bowed down to him.

"I'd be honored." She, the woman who had knocked down a mountain half a year ago and rebuilt it in a day, was bowing down to him.

Then she left, closing the door of the medical room and he activated his Byakugan to watch her hand his file to a nurse, pick up another patient's. After examining her next patient's file she walked towards the room adjacent to his. He looked down at his arm. Perfectly mended and she didn't even need to bandage it since she had made a new layer of skin. He still felt the numbing chakra continue to circulate on his forearm – keeping the sore feeling he should have felt at bay.

Neji walked out of the room and stopped a few meters away from the room she was working in, giving a little boy a shot.

"And the big bad wolf said, 'I'll huff and puff and blow your house down!'" She told the boy with as much enthusiasm as she could muster. Then Sakura placed the needle near his arm and injected something into him discreetly as he began to ask excitedly, "And then what? Then what?!" He didn't notice Sakura give him the shot he had been dreading.

Neji took a deep breath and bowed down to Sakura but she didn't notice him since she was busy tending to the boy's curiosity and health.

He heard Sakura moan and was brought back from his nostalgia. He was about to get up but Sakura seemed to quiet down from whatever was disturbing her in her dreams. He inwardly cursed himself for getting lost in his thoughts as he activated his Byakugan and examined his surroundings – making sure they were still safe.

_Still safe. _

He had decided the moment Sakura had closed her eyes to sleep that he would not wake her tonight. He would let her sleep. He knew she was on two previous missions; one message delivery, another Mist Medical Emergency, and now she was on a Scroll Retrieval with him.

He wished she didn't push herself so hard.

Then scowled himself for thinking that. It really wasn't any of his business whether or not she took or refused a mission.

He sighed as he glanced down at the ANBU mask she kept at the side of her head.

She had taken up his offer to train with him three weeks later when he went to the hospital to check on his cousin.

It was a simple conversation.

"Hello Neji."

"How is Hinata?"

"Healed, she will be out in a few minutes."

Neji nodded, knowing that he should have probably said thank you.

"Neji," Sakura spoke his name with an unsure tone as she looked up from a medical file, "Are you busy tonight?"

He was busy. He had promised to have dinner with his old team.

"No," He lied.

"Can I take you up on your offer to train with you?"

"Yes."

"Thank you," She bowed down to him once more, "I get off work at eight."

"I'll pick you up," He decided immediately, and by the look on Sakura she was going to suggest meeting up somewhere but then she nodded hearing his response.

Neji turned around and walked out the hospital without a goodbye.

"You had no one there," Neji whispered to Sakura's sleeping body.

What the hell did he expect?

Her team left her. Her friends were advancing without her. She was a medic not a medic ninja…not an ANBU…she was…a child. A child who forced herself to grow up.

He felt sadness swell up in his chest when he realized he probably spent the most time with Sakura in the past 8 years than anyone else had. Even Sai had more companions and friends than she did.

He gritted his teeth together as he watched her chest rise and fall as she had her arms wrapped around her stomach. As though she was subconsciously trying to keep herself together – to keep herself from falling apart.

He remembered waiting for her outside the hospital. He had just canceled his dinner plans and Lee was as pissed as all hell and decided one thousand pushups was a good punishment for Neji not joining them.

"Idiot," Neji thought to himself as he paced back and forth in front of the hospital.

Three minutes after eight, Sakura was walking out of her office looking in a daze and then the corners of her lips twitched as she approached the hospital doors. A few moments after she exited, she looked up at Neji and tried her best to smile, but a frowning rag doll had her beat in that department.

"You came," Was her greeting.

"I said I would," Was his response and they began walking down the streets of Konoha.

"I suppose you did," She whispered, probably more to herself than to him.

They walked in silence through the town, towards the meadow where Sakura practiced.

"Any rules?" Neji asked as they neared the clearing.

"Let's keep each other alive?" Sakura asked trying to make a joke but her voice sounded dull and sad.

Neji nodded and asked Sakura, "When is your ANBU exam?"

ANBU exams were individual affairs. You got invited to an ANBU exam.

"In about two months but I've been practicing for almost seven though."

Neji nodded, he had about nine months of training for his ANBU exam as well.

Then they fought till the break of dawn. Neji had never had such an exhilarating fight; he was trying harder to conserve his chakra because the spar between them was so long. Sakura on the other hand seemed to be handling herself in strides. She never winced or cried out when Neji paralyzed or injured her. She'd simply try to create enough space between each other that she could quickly heal herself or open a chakra passage that he managed to close. By the end of the fight, Sakura had even tried some of Neji's moves on him. He of course, being more experienced, had easily blocked them. But the best thing about their spar was Sakura's attitude change. She would grin and was almost smiling as they teased each other throughout the fight.

"You have improved." He stated without emotions as they both lay on the cold hard ground, exhausted and breathing heavily.

"Thank you." Sakura spoke back in the same tone.

After an immeasurable amount of time, he asked Sakura softly, "What do you think your team would say if they could see you now?" He expected her to answer wittingly and give him a cocky smirk like she had been doing during their teasing batter.

"I don't have a team," She replied smoothly.

It was a line she practiced often – he could tell.

He turned his head to look at her, and in her eyes for the first time he saw uncensored pain. He saw the tears itching to escape her eyelids but she kept the waterworks at bay.

"You can cry," Neji said.

"Crying doesn't change the past or future. It's pointless," Sakura said with her eyes watching the passing clouds over the disappearing moon. The sunrise was coming up in the horizon, bringing light to a new day.

"I suppose you're right," Neji agreed, "Yes, you are."

Two hours passed, maybe more. The sun was already staring at them in the middle sky and neither of them made any notion to move away from their spot under the tree.

"Neji," Sakura stated his name again.

"Yes."

"Do you think I will pass?"

"Yes."

"Hm," She looked at him with an uneasy smile, "I'll be a higher rank than Saskue and Naruto."

"And better than them too probably," Neji replied hoping he picked the right words this time.

Something flashed in front of Sakura's eyes because for a moment, he saw his reflection disappear from her dark gray eyes.

"I heard Tsunade ordered them back to the village again," Sakura whispered.

"I didn't know," he looked at her trying to see the feelings she was trying to hide, "no one talks about them much anymore."

"They won't abandon their mission," Sakura said standing up, "So neither will I."

"And what is your mission?" Neji asked standing up beside her.

"To figure out the future but, right now, to kick your ass," Sakura said doing a sweep kick to his legs which he was barely able to dodge by flipping backwards.

"Bring it." He grinned.

And then for that free moment, he saw Sakura smile.

A real smiled.

Then it was gone.

But it was there and that was all that mattered.

Neji ran his fingers through his hair as he activated his Byakugan to scan the area again.

_Nothing_.

He didn't really expect there to be anything, it was just an unnerving feeling to watch Sakura look so defenseless.

He remembered when they were on an ANBU team together and 2 of the ANBU's had invaded the basement of the rogues' hideout while he and Sakura were on the first floor. He watched her work and he couldn't imagine that he had actually fought her – she was like an unconventional machine.

She moved at perfect moments, her hits were flawless and when it came to close quarter combat she seemed to be able to move out of the way of anything. Most of all – she moved perfectly with him. Since it was his first mission with Sakura he was still wary on how they would work together but he eventually stopped concentrating on protecting Sakura and began to treat her like a teammate and with that freedom from him, she unleashed herself even more – killing enemies in one hit or one strike. It was as if she could read his mind when their bodies intertwined perfectly, moving into different positions and dancing across the room of missing nins, delivering deadly blows.

It seemed as though she had no blind spots, and with his Byakugan neither did he. They were a perfect fighting match.

The mission ended within a matter of minutes and afterwards Sakura healed Neji's leg and the two other ANBU's with their damaged ribs and arms. It was ironic how Sakura had had the most battle and as a medic ninja survived better than all of them.

Not one scratch.

Of course the other ANBU probably believed that she healed herself, but Neji was there. He saw. The only person she let get an opening to hurt her was him.

He pulled himself back out of his memories. It was starting to annoy how easily she made him think of the past and yet, with only a handful of memories with her – he had enjoyed every single one of them. He swore to himself that when they returned from this mission he would force Ino or Tenten to go shopping or whatever girls do, with Sakura. Sakura had lost all her friends' years ago and never went out…but she deserved to have a normal life, so he didn't care how much she protested or if she avoided them to the ends of the earth – he would make sure she would feel at home again.

He had given up believing her Team was ever going to come back. They were only legends now.

Everyone tried to be there for her when she was dismissed from Team Seven…well not everyone. He hadn't and he was sure some others hadn't either. But he knew that Ino tried, tried like only a best friend could till Sakura pushed her away so much that Ino wasn't sure she even knew her anymore. Years later, when Sakura began to speak to people again, outside the Hokage, she wasn't the same, Tenten had said. She said that her answers were short and dull. It was as if she was saying something she repeated a dozen times before.

He wondered if Sakura could be her great ANBU self along with her old childhood self at the same time.

But if it was between the old Nobody Sakura and this New Sakura…he'd pick the new one, even if it meant he had to look into dead eyes and a fake smile. It was worth it.

He stared at the pink haired ANBU barely a meter away from him. He could hear her crystal cut breathing and see the rapid movements behind her eyelid while she dreamed.

~*~

Sakura was so tired and grateful that Neji allowed her to get some rest before him. Her body's chakra was at its absolute bare minimal, and all her chakra reserves were depleted. She was running on empty and needed sleep to regain some of her strength.

She felt unbearable sadness as her eyelids engulfed her into absolute darkness. She anticipated the dream she would have.

There were only two she ever had anymore. Two visions that seemed to be cemented in time – unchangeable. She saw them years in advance, and no matter how much she tried to change…it was edge into the book of Fate and Sakura could do nothing but live it. The outcome would be the same.

One she had already experienced.

One that she would experience.

This one was the past.

Just as she did six years ago, she saw the vision that prophesized her mother's death and no matter how often she tried to go into the future to be there for her mother's stroke or how she tried to rush her mother to the hospital before it happened – the vision never changed.

Then years later, the time came for her mother to die, Sakura sat on the couch minutes before her mother's oncoming stroke.

"What is it, Sakura? You know it's rude to stare," Her mother said as she finished knitting the nineteenth row of her scarf.

Sakura said nothing. She'd already been in her visions so often; she'd gone through every single possible conversation with her.

"Sakura! Talk to me!" Her mother ordered as she slapped her project on her lap and looked at her daughter stubbornly.

_What do I say? I've already begged her to stay alive. I've already confessed all my sins to her. I've already told her how much she means to me. _

But the thing was, her mother had no idea Sakura had done all those things hundreds of times. She only saw her daughter staring at her with a blank expression and colorless eyes behind green shaded glasses.

She knew her daughter had a secret. It was obvious in her movements and her cold demeanor. No matter how much Sakura changed, she was still her child and a mother knew her daughter no matter what.

"You know, you could tell me anything," Her mother pleaded.

"You're about to die," Sakura said chillingly and goosebumps shoot through her mother's body at Sakura's harsh words, "And there isn't a damn thing I can do about it."

Sakura looked away, away from her mother's frightened stare.

Where was her little girl? Where was the child who cried when her knee got scraped? Where was her child who would bring birds with broken wings home so she could mend them? Where was the child who needed her?

Before her sat a woman.

Not a child.

"Sakura, what on earth are you talking about?"

Her dead eyes traveled back up her mother's body and connected with her eyes. "I'm still useless," Sakura said heartlessly.

"You're not useless, baby," Her mother cooed as she felt a sudden sting in the tips of her fingers, "Your father and I are very proud. You hear him tell everyone that his daughter's an ANBU? How he praises you all the time," Her mother gave a weak smile as every inch of her body began to tingle.

Suddenly her body froze as Sakura stood up and walked towards her. Her daughter went on her knees and placed her hand on top of hers. She felt a chilly southing flow of chakra enter her body as she became numb.

"So you don't feel it." Sakura muttered.

That was all she could do. Her mother's body was adamant on dying and that was that.

Sakura's mother's life seemed to flash before her eyes from her childhood days in the academy playground to watching her adult daughter make rare visits home. She saw everything. The day she met her husband, her amateur missions, her wedding day, the day she got pregnant with Sakura….oh how she loved Sakura.

She was her precious.

Suddenly keeping her eyelids open was too heavy a task.

So she would close them.

_Only for a moment. _

_Only for a moment. _

"I'm….proud of you….Sakura." Her mother whispered as her body began to lose all its life chakra.

Sakura remained motionless as she stared at her dead mother. She was still sending anesthetic chakra into her body – comforting a corpse.

Sakura sighed.

She'd cried in so many visions. She'd felt so much pain already. She'd tried to change it from happening so often.

But now, finally living in the present – she felt nothing.

No tears escaped her eyes, no trembling came through her body – she just existed in the same room as a corpse.

Her mother's body.

A vessel that held nothing.

Sakura gritted her teeth and walked out. She had a mission to report for, let her father discover his dead wife without his daughter in the room. Let him cry in peace.

Let him cry for me.

So Sakura left on her mission, the assassination of a Rogue ninja while everyone discovered the loss of a Haruno. Everyone would be worried about telling her the news but little did they know that she had watched her mother die a hundred times already.

She was engulfed by darkness again.

And the dream replayed once more.

~*~

When Sakura finally stirred, Neji let out a grateful sigh. She had slept for 38 hours and the sun was at high noon when her black eyes finally reappeared from under her pale eyelids.

"Neji," Sakura whispered as she stretched out like a kitten and let out a loud yawn. She lifted her hands above her head and arched her back against the tree behind her, "Why didn't you wake me up for guard duty?" She asked rubbing her eyes.

"You needed your rest."

"Didn't have to let me sleep for nearly half the day."

"You slept for a day and a half," Neji clarified as he stood up, ignoring Sakura's surprised expression, "Let's go. We're late for Konoha."

Sakura nodded. "I'm sorry." She said as she stood up, and it took her a moment to remember Kami, the jewels, and the tree. "Did you put the rock in your bag?" Sakura asked taking out the two small gems from her pocket.

Neji merely nodded – she didn't look comfortable sleeping with the gemmed rock, "You have enough chakra?" He asked as Sakura fumbled with the two small pieces of stone between her fingers.

"Twenty percent," She said. It would have been greater if she could have a nice meal and time to meditate but twenty percent was more than enough for a trip home.

She looked ahead ten minutes while Neji straightened out his knapsack and put on his cloak.

They were safe but the simple glimpse into the future had worn her out considerably.

She yawned again as she slipped her ANBU mask over her face, trying to ignore the fact that she had just used half her chakra to see only ten minutes.

She tucked the gems into her pocket and tried to relax as she picked her robe and tightened it around herself. They would be safe. She could operate on ten percent just fine.

_But why had ten minutes just taken up ten percent of my energy?_ Sakura questioned internally. Normally it took only a fraction of her chakra to look ahead.

She assumed it was because of her recent overuse of her power and silently reprimanded herself for it. She would only use it if a fight occurred because she would probably fall unconscious if she looked ahead again. At least in a fight, the rush of adrenalin helped to use chakra meaningfully.

The two ninjas jumped upon a branch and without another word, leaping in the direction of the Konoha Village.

They stopped hours later to swallow two food pills each that Neji carried in his bag. It was the first piece of nutrition Sakura had in over five days.

She could feel the chakra in her body thanking her as she slowly regained at least three percent while they rested momentarily. She wondered if Neji could tell how little chakra she had.

~*~

Neji stared at Sakura hunched over as she seemed in deep thought. He couldn't understand why her chakra was so low and groaned internally at the thought of being attacked right now. It would not be good.

"Let's go," Sakura said jumping up and running through the forest with Neji beside her.

_At least when she runs she doesn't try to stay behind. _

A shiver ran through Neji's body – something was wrong. With his Byakugan eyes activated he looked around and noticed two extremely large chakra bodies approaching them from the east at incomprehensible speeds.

"We're being followed!" Neji screamed increasing his speed and Sakura followed suit.

She quickly looked ahead into the future, only a minute and a half ahead and what she saw was not promising for the next ten minutes.

Itachi and Kisame.

They were screwed, and she didn't need to look further into the future to know that.

"Akatsuki," Sakura said as she created four clones and dispersed them throughout the area – hoping it would buy them some time.

* * *

**A/N**: One of the longer chapters….and might be all sorts of boring but it was necessary. Some flashbacks so you get a better idea of Sakura and her relationship with everyone and Neji. Next chapter will (finally) have the interaction between two Akatsukis and our favorite two ANBUs.

Thank you for reading…and reviewing. I love reviews. :x


	5. Sakura v Itachi

"How close are they?" Sakura asked as Neji and her switched sides, leaping from left to right, creating a zig-zag pattern. She could feel their enemies approaching them faster than she had expected.

"45 meters," he replied placing exploding seals on every tree they neared.

"Do we fight?" Sakura asked, unwilling to look into the future until they made a plan since without one, she was unable to doubt their imminent death.

"Do we have a choice?" Neji asked back.

_Of course we don't. _

_Why are they after us? _

_…_

_The scroll? _

They heard explosions go off behind them like an orchestrated symphony. Sakura's heart beat thumped loudly in her ears – she couldn't remember the last time she was ever unsure or scared of a fight – maybe that time Gaara attacked her?

Once more, both of them created diversion clones and leapt into a thicket of branches side by side.

Both their rapid breathing slowed down from the sound of a roaring thunder to a whispering wind. They hid their chakras as they waited – hoping to at least gain the element of surprise. But logically…who could surprise the Akatsuki members?

Sakura ripped the red string of her necklace and placed the red pill inside her mouth, pushing it back with her tongue into the deep hole left behind by her wisdom tooth removal. After the oral surgery she had made sure one of the holes never healed and so a gap remained so she could store pills for emergency situations.

This was one of those situations she considered an emergency.

Neji watched her with a pang of anger. That was another thing he hated when working with Sakura, anytime they were confronted with an enemy of presumed great skill– she was ready to commit suicide. As if she held secrets which were more valuable than her life. All ninjas were taught personal death jutsu if they were ever under interrogation, a basic jutsu done with both hands and a jutsu done with one hand. Those of course could be prevented by simple paralysis so ninjas that held extreme valuable information were required to carry a 'death pill' at all times. Neji didn't remember Sakura ever being in a high level information gathering mission before.

Their eyes met momentarily. Silent words that neither understood were passed and as the explosions calmed and the dust slowly cleared in front of them both were tense and prepared for the worst. Sakura looked ahead 10 seconds in quick time and saw a long thick spiky sword come behind Neji so quickly that he couldn't react quick enough and got his arm sliced off while Itachi appeared in front of Sakura, thrusting her forward with his hand around her neck, pushing her up against the tree as he squeezed her wind-pip shut.

Sakura came back to the present in a blink and counted in her head mentally to eight before she pushed Neji to the side, causing the sword that was coming to slice into him to miss and land into the trunk of a nearby tree rather than his body. She quickly rolled off the branch – falling to the ground but evading Itachi's devil fingers. She didn't have enough chakra to use her eyes like she would in a battle this intense. It aggravated her to no end how careless she had been. She was the responsible, well thought out planner. Always ready.

She could only use her power in small quick sprints – looking ahead for a few seconds and coming back to prevent whatever was going to harm her. She couldn't look ahead at fifty possibilities and pick the best one; she only had enough energy to pick the one that would not cause the worst case scenario she just witnessed.

She desperately wanted to go unlock her level one Mirai where all attacks appeared in slow motion – allowing her to move in super human speed but she could not risk the sudden chakra loss. She had to stay conscious – especially when dealing with Itachi.

The man of her least desire stood for less than a millisecond; confused. His Sharingan had revealed their location; his Sharingan had seen them hiding and he had seen himself grab the little hooded ninja by the neck and squeeze the breath out of him. He had seen it. So what happened?

He heard his partner lunge after the other ninja, probably very aggravated he couldn't finish the battle in one bloody swing. _Keep him alive, Kisame_, Itach thought uselessly. If he was going to kill his playmate then that meant Itachi had to keep his alive. They were order to keep one alive, after all.

All this thought process happened before Sakura even fell half a foot from the tree branch. Itach used the same branch to propel himself after the fallen ANBU who was doing various hand movements that his Sharingan registered to be a something from the Water Village.

Thick fog appeared in front of him and he felt insulted at the pathetic genjutsu and dispelled it with barely a flicker of his finger. When he dispelled it a familiar water dragon appeared out of nowhere and attacked him. He had almost smirked, _how deceitful_.

He assumed if the ninja more chakra he would have probably put up a good fight but he wasn't and Itachi easily sliced the water dragon in half by close-lining it with his arm.

Sakura stood on the branch, nearly losing her footing as she tried to kneel out of visibility. It was useless because his Sharingan could detect her but her ninja-instincts didn't allow her to be in plain sight.

She blinked ahead five second, Itachi had her by the throat up against the tree squeezing the life out of her. She blinked back into the present, and was greeted with Itach's hand reaching to her throat and pushing her up against the tree. He was too fast and she couldn't avoid him. A deep grunt of struggle escaped her lips as she tried to gain control. Her hands outstretched towards his arm to ease his grip, but obviously he was man-handling her.

He cocked his head to the side, wanting to end this quickly and without blood. His other hand reached towards her mask and he snapped it off and was slightly surprised to find that it was a kunoichi. Immediately she closed her eyes as tightly as possible, willing herself not to look into his eyes and silently cursing at herself over and over – he had managed to attack her during that immensely tiny moment of weakness she had when she looked into the future. She knew she should have risked bringing her Mirai to level one. She might have been able to match Itachi's inhuman and unprecedented speed for a short amount of time at least. Right now…this….was pathetic.

He looked at her dully, boredom showing through his dark red eyes, "Death or suffering?" he questioned her monotonously as if he were asking if she preferred rain or snow.

"Eat shit," she gasped at him, trying desperately to not look into his eyes but his thumb pressed hard onto her collarbone causing her eyes to flinch open for his a second.

And a second was all he needed to activate his Tsukuyomi in his left eye. At the same time Sakura tried to use the last of her chakra to escape the present, to go to the future where the pain would be over and death would take her away. She didn't want to experience Itachi's legendary Tsukuyomi.

Then something unexpected to both of them when Itachi activated Tsukuyomi and Sakura activated her Mirai with direct eye contact between them.

Sakura, for the first time in years saw a color.

She recognized it immediately; red.

Itachi for the first time was unable to control his Tsukuyomi as the color around him transformed into a blurry gray.

Both of their abilities dispelled each other and Itachi stared at Sakura with hardened angry eyes as Sakura stared back trying to hide her fear.

Red.

Blood.

Sharingan.

Itachi had made her see a color and she had not felt the pain of Tsukuyomi that she should have. Her brain was not functioning under its usual analytical structure-oriented way – she was forced to rely on her subconscious instinctual desire to stay alive. And right now she was alive.

While Itachi was used to his growing blindness when the Sharingan was not activated, but he was not used to colors disappearing – colors was the way he distinguished most things when he wasn't relying on chakra patterns and outlines.

Sakura's hand lifted up to her enemy's arm which was still depleting her oxygen intake and he watched her without movement. He was mildly curious what the little female was going to do. Sakura gasped as Itachi's hand tightened around her neck, cutting off all possible air. She hated the amusement in his eyes as he watched her suffer.

Fuck you, Sakura growled to herself as her hand clenched his forearm and sent the bit of medic chakra she converted from her life chakra into his arm in hopes of severely damaging his muscles, but before she could even destroy anything her own right arm ruptured in unimaginable pain and she let out a final grunt as her body fell into unconsciousness from both lack of air and bodily damage. She had no more chakra and was unable to convert anymore life chakra into useable chakra. Itachi was successfully suffocating her to death.

He pressed harder on her neck and a small stream of blood escaped the corner of her partially opened lips. Color had returned to the Akatsuki member's eyes but something else had escaped him.

Air.

Itachi furrowed his eyebrows as he watched his victim's almost lifeless body go completely limp.

He couldn't breathe.

It was as if someone was suffocating him just as he was doing to her. He could sense no chakra around his neck or any jutsu being cast…he was forced to ease his grip on her and suddenly his own windpipe reopened.

This infuriated him.

And it took a lot to infuriate the man who could watch a bundle of cute kitties get hanged without even caring.

_What jutsu did she use on me? _He questioned himself and he mentally reviewed all the hand movements she had made, searching for a slight flinch that may have meant something or a change he might have possibly missed…but that was impossible – Itachi never missed anything.

He let go of her body and all her dead weight landed on the branch and then her body tipped over and fell to the ground with a thud.

He felt his shoulder dislocate.

His eyes widened in the slightest way at the realization, but before he could make anything of it his partner appeared behind him. He could smell Kisame's blood gushing out of a fresh wound.

The blue skinned man was not as intuitive and did not notice the change of Itachi's mood since the change in facial expressions were so minuscule, Kisame just thought they were just a myth. He slung his gigantic sword, Samehada, over his shoulder and cocked his head to the side looking down at the possibly dead kunoichi.

"Got it," Kisame implied to the large gold and purple stoned scroll in his other hand.

"Kill him?" Itachi asked numbly, choosing to ignore the throbbing pain in his shoulder. He'd put it back when Kisame would go hunting for dinner.

"We were told to leave one alive and it sure as hell didn't look like she survived your little eye display. But god damn, I wanted to kill that bastard so badly. He was good, but I think his attention was on that thing," he nudged his chin at the girl on the ground below them, "fuck, I'm going to need new pants…" the man cursed as Itachi just breathed out a, "Hn."

"I swear that brat could see me coming from –," the taller Akatsuki paused and both men looked over their shoulder, "Taifuu is coming."

"Let's go," Itachi instructed and they both disappeared.

.

...

.

A few minutes later an impossibly large, fat and long orange and brown colored snake slithered through the spot where Kisame and Itachi were previously standing. The snake coiled itself around the branch and waited – like a predator stalking it's pray.

Moment's later a tall shinobi with no display or sign of his village anywhere on his body save for the swirly ANBU tattoo on his left shoulder jumped onto the branch where the snake waited. The man's body was long and lean, hinting at his swift agility. He had wild long dark purple hair that looked black in the shade of the trees. His piercing light blue eyes stared down at the snake as his plump lips slowly formed a wicked grin that distorted his once angelic looking face into a horrendous ogar-like mask.

A strong gust of wind blew past him, causing his dark blue cloak to sway in the wind, revealing his black uniform underneath, "Get her," the man instructed to seemingly no one in particular but the snake began to uncoil itself and slither down the trunk of the tree. As the creature traveled down the tree slowly it began to morph into something else. Its vibrant colored skin began to change into a soft rusty red color as feathers sprouted from its scale. Its snout became a long golden beak and a moment later two large wings immerged from the middle of its shrinking body. The creature flew down beside Sakura and grabbed her body with its long bronze talons.

"Phoenix," the blue cloaked man grinned at his partner's choice of transformation.

Suddenly ten rogue shinobis, wearing matching blue cloaks appeared behind the purple haired man, all stationed on different branches.

"Kumori," the closest rogue spoke to their leader, "Akatsuki were here."

"I see," Kumori's smirk dropped a little, returning his face to that of a pouting angel as he licked his lips devilishly watching the Pheonix fly up to meet him at eye level.

"Lock her up," he instructed the bird and turned his head slightly to address his men, "follow the Akatsuki discreetly, I want to know what they were doing…" he turned to look at the girl laying unconscious in the bird's talons, "with my little Seal Breaker," he finished as he stepped closer to the bird flapping its powerful wings, he leaned forward and brushed the dirt stained pink hair out of Sakura's face.

_What other secrets do you posses?_ He asked wordlessly to the unconscious body before him.

"Yes sir!" The missing nins behind him bowed and disappeared in a fog. Kumori took a step back and watched the bird lift higher and fly into the clouds.

"Akatsuki and Sakura….hmmmm," he carefully brought slender hand towards his face and bit at the nail on his thumb gently as he continued to wonder, "what could you want with her?" he questioned the air, "or did you want her out of the way?...or did you steal something of hers?" He let out a low dark chuckle as he continued to speak to the wind, "or did the little kunoichi get mixed with the wrong crowd?" he sighed as he took his nail away from his lips, "it is all so very very interesting."

* * *

A/N: I hope you too, find it "all so very very interesting." ;)

Thank you for reading, and special thanks for those who leave reviews.


	6. Captured

"We're being followed," Kisame stated the obvious as both missing nins increased their speed, "I think we should play with them."

Itachi said nothing. Kisame knew that his partner avoided pointless fighting at all cost, still it didn't mean that he couldn't try to persuade the Sharingan wielder into a petty fight now and then.

"Deidara and Sasori," Itachi asked in the tone of a statement.

"Mission. Twilight. Shadow," Kisame replied stoutly.

That translated on Deidara and Sasori were out on a mission and would be back in the Shadow Village hideout at sunset. Pein had wanted them to report in six days with the scroll.

They had time.

"Shadow," Itachi repeated coldly as they both made a sharp right towards the Shadow Village which was a day's run away.

"I wonder what's in the scroll," Kisame thought out loud.

Itachi remained silent.

"I mean they had ANBUs delivering it…not the best ANBUs at that…" Kisame tried to comfort himself, still being angry at his wounded leg and throbbing arm.

…

"Do you think we'll find some way of opening it? Seals look hella complicated."

…

"There has to be a reason leader has been sending us to retrieve so many seal breaking scrolls."

…

"Are you ignoring me?"

…

"Itachi, I think I'm in love with you."

…

Kisame sighed and then Itachi finally spoke, "Sometimes I wonder why I haven't killed you yet."

The shark descendent rolled his eyes and muttered under his breath, "I wonder that too…"

Itachi was used to Kisame's pointless teasing and normally it was easy to ignore but his mind was plagued with the pink haired kunoichi. He recognized her from somewhere and began to go over every face he had ever seen that he hadn't killed – which included the hundreds of random people he saw in villages.

The black haired ninja continued to break down every thought he had as they continued running for hours – well into the night. Finally – when his babbling partner eventually shut up for a long enough period of time, it clicked – Sakura Haruno.

But then his mind reminded him that she didn't possess any talent except some chakra control he witnessed once. Plus she had green eyes – not black. He tried to remember more about her but all that came to mind was her blind loyalty to Konoha and that she was on his little brother's team.

_She was….wasn't she? _

He was pretty sure she was.

Then he groaned internally, aggravated with his thoughts. Why couldn't he remember more about the once useless kunoichi? He did not like the fact that the little ANBU girl had countered his Tsukuyomi. Somehow.

He hadn't sensed her activate any Jutsu and that further perplexed him. He decided that he shouldn't have left so quickly but instead examined her; figured her out. But Taifuu was approaching and Pein had explicitly warned against them engaging with the clan anytime soon.

Their leader wanted to figure out what that organization was up to and not clash with them, just yet.

Itachi began debating Taifuu's appearance; _after the scrolls or after the ANBU?_

They certainly weren't after them, which meant they may have been after the girl or boy – the ninja's that trailed after them had given up too quickly to be intent on attacking them.

"Kisame, are you aware of any jutsu that turns eyes black?" Itachi asked shooting his partner a look saying that it was a serious question and any smart mouthing was not welcomed.

"A few Keikai Genkai change eye color. Any body markings?" Kisame asked as they both ran towards the sun-setting horizon.

He hadn't noticed anything on her arms, or legs, and her face was clear of everything but the Ying: Seal.

"Just black eyes."

"Nope," Kisame said popping the p, and then curiously he asked, "why?"

But it was too late; Itachi was done with talking for the rest of the trip.

He hated how jaded the Sharingan user would be sometimes. But he was certainly the best person to work with. Everyone else drove Kisame off the wall to be partnered with. Itach was…alright. He worked efficiently and never made mistakes, and was surprisingly patient, but most importantly Kisame would rather be fighting beside the master Sharingan wielder than fighting against him.

He wasn't scared.

No.

He just…he was comfortable where he was – on the same team as Itachi.

Besides, the Uchiha had a wicked sense of humor when he was relatively calm. There was one thing scarier than a pissed off Itachi – a witty Itachi in a good mood. That only happened when the Uchiha got into a fight with a worthy opponent. Thankfully that was rare; the world would not be able to handle it otherwise.

They jumped over a clear blue shallow river stream and landed gracefully at the bank. Their speed did not wavier as they continued down the grassy meadow towards the patch of trees to set up camp by a lake.

Something was irking Kisame and the scroll was feeling slightly heavier than before. It was the kind of feeling a person gets from being empathetic and it was making the blue skinned man hungrier. Finally after stealing a glance at his partner, the man noticed that the Sharingan wielder was dissatisfied.

He labeled Itachi three ways;

Normal Itachi….deadly.

Bored Itachi….fast and deadly.

Content Itachi…gore loving and deadly.

Those were all the emotions he had ever seen on his shorter partner. But he had never…ever witnessed dissatisfied Itachi. He was almost positive that it was dissatisfaction. The frown on his face looked more aggravated than his usual face and he knew that Itachi was incapable of feeling sad.

His partner turned his head and gave Kisame a glare that warned the shark man to stop staring if he valued his life, "going to confess again?" he teased sadistically.

Kisame looked forward again as his stomach rumbled, "No, you just happened to look really delicious and I'm hungry…you'd probably be poisonous though," he added hoping to get another sentence out of him but Itachi simply nodded his head towards the upcoming lake. Kisame asked if Itachi was hungry as they approached the mass of fish containing water.

Itachi didn't respond and Kisame took that as a, I'm-too-shy-to-ask-for-food-because-I'm-watching-my-figure-so-please-just-get-me-an-anarexic-fish glare. If he didn't poke fun at his partner, he was sure to have lost his mind years ago. No one could be in the company of someone so stoic for long without needing some sort of companionship that extended to friendship. Not that Itachi and Kisame were friends….but they were companions in a loose interpretation of the word. They put up with eachother rather well.

"I'll take that as a yes!" Kisame shouted as he neared towards the lake – stripping to his birthday suit and jumping in to get some dinner.

Itachi walked the other way to collect some firewood and when his partner had dove underwater, he grabbed hold of his arm and pushed his dislocated shoulder back into place.

His mind wandered again.

He was trying to review every single detail that occurred between him and the pink haired girl that would have caused him to feel the pain she felt as she fell from the tree.

The only reasonable explanation would have come through his failed Tsukuyomi attempt on her but he didn't notice her do anything strange except a slight widening of her eyes but that was normal. All his prey reacted with animalistic fear before he sent them into a realm of unimaginable pain.

Then he slowly deduced she must have done something during her moments of fear to cancel out the effect. He also concluded that she felt the pain he was causing her too. She could not breathe when he choked her, her arm bleed after she tried damaging his and then when she fell to the ground he had heard a distinct crack of a shoulder that was not his.

They were somehow bound to one another and yet he could not find a single hint of Chakra that was not his own anywhere on or inside himself.

He made a pile for the fire and lit it with his jutsu. He felt the same, save for the injury in his arm but he was sure it would heal in due time. Then he examined one of the most important parts of his body; his mind.

Everything was normal.

_Almost normal. _

"Caught a bunch of bass and one eel!" Kisame shouted as he approached the campfire Itachi had started.

His partner simply nodded as he closed his eyes and removed the Sharingan, ignoring the fact that his vision became a blurry hazy mess. He was going to go blind soon but as long as he continued to keep the Sharingan active it wouldn't be a problem.

The black haired man closed his matching dark eyes and leaned his head back, he could feel Kisame's piercing fish eyes on him but he didn't care. Kisame could stare at him all he wanted as long as he paid attention to their surroundings while Itachi meditated himself into the depths of his mind. He examined his inner self for any seals, chakra, or presence that were not his own.

Everything was the same.

His secrets were locked up and untouched, his mind was organized, and his thoughts were heavily protected from intruders.

_Then what was different?_ He questioned in agitation.

'_Fuck,'_ a female voice cursed in a muted whisper and Itachi's eyes shot open with the Sharingan activated and scanning the area.

All he saw was Kisame with a fish tail hanging from his mouth with another hanging over the fire, staring at the Uchiha as if he had finally cracked. He swallowed the rest of the raw fish, "everything okay?" his partner asked with genuine concern as he, himself, scouted the area with his excellent chakra senses.

'_God, relax. Relax. RELAX!'_ The voice continued to echo softly yet violently in his head. Not loudly but softly, like a warm breeze, unnoticeable unless you were waiting for it.

He stared at Kisame who stared back, perplex and confused and inwardly wondering if they were having a staring match. He tried not to blink.

Itachi deduced Kisame hadn't heard it.

He was hearing voices in his head. Surely that wasn't a sign of insanity; he hadn't planned to lose his mind yet.

'_Breathe, breathe damnit…stupid fucking chakra loss. Stupid stupid stupid. Why did I have to examine the area so much….why….why damnit. Fucking stupid. Wasted so much chakra….now in this stupid stupid stupid mess. I thought I couldn't get into shit like this….but nooo, here I am…stuck in…a god damn dark place somewhere. Good fucking job. Brilliant. Wonderful. Woohoo. God fucking damnit all to hell. Stupid chakra. Stupid low reserves. Stupid me. So fucking weak…god damnit….Fuck fuck fuck fuck.'_

The voice was starting to annoy him and he searched for a way to shut it up.

'_Calm down. Okay….assess the situation.'_

At least the insane voice had some rationality.

'_2 percent chakra in the body…okay in a cave….chained….how S-and-M-ish…ugh…seals on my hand, damnit…can't see them. Breathe, breathe, breathe. Come on Sakura, concentrate. You have to get out of here.'_

Now his interest was piqued, Itachi leaned back as he closed his eyes (Kisame declared himself the winner of the staring mate), concentrating on the origin of the foreign voice.

It was a little further….just a little further.

He traveled across his mind, aware of all its surroundings and all of its inner workings until he finally found what was off. It wasn't noticeable because it seemed to be normal – it was a chakra type passageway.

Not exactly a passageway.

But more like – a hallway of chakra. He observed how both his and the kunoichi's chakra blended together to create it. As he pushed himself further down the hallway, he felt more unwanted the closer he got to her side.

Her voice got louder, as if he was standing right beside her.

'_Damnit…I can't move…ugrhmph.'_

He heard the sound of her throwing up.

'_Ugh, I lost too much chakra…none to heal myself and now I've been kidnapped by the Akatsuki.'_

Was she now? That was news to Itachi.

'_Stupid Itachi….god damnit, if I wasn't so scared of his stupid Tsukuyomi I might not be in this mess….stupid damn Sharingan bastard….fuck. If he locked me up in here I swear I am going castrate him a thousand god damn times. Why me….'_

He was going to make sure she'd feel the Tsukuyomi next time…

'_Breathe Sakura, breathe,'_ she tried to snap herself out of her internal bantering.

Itachi continued to push himself closer and closer towards her mental center; he was out of the hallway and in a strangers mind.

'_Telling myself to breathe. That's the best an ANBU leader can do, eh_?' She continued to belittle herself.

ANBU leader…interesting.

'_Headache…god…I'm hearing voices…ugh.'_

He noted that the headache was probably from his thoughts being whispered from his mental plane.

He also noticed the chakra flows around her were exceptionally low.

Civilian low.

She was weak.

"_Suicide, have to commit suicide. Not with the Akatsuki…I can't risk it…I won't make it." _

Itachi finally got into a position where he could see through her droopy eyelids.

'_But what if I'm wrong? What if it's not Akatsuki. God damn shoulder. Stop it, Sakura. It doesn't matter who it is. Someone has you chained up…I have to –Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck,'_ she coughed hoarsely, and began excreting unknown substances from her mouth, temporarily interrupting her thoughts.

When she opened her eyes again after her violent fit, he saw through her eyes - her vision was all in black and white – apparently she didn't see color. He noticed that she was in some sort of dungeon, definitely underground by the look of the stone but since he couldn't tell the color, he was at a loss of the location. Nothing was carved on it, it was all natural. Itachi then noticed a man walking through the only real source of light he could find.

"Sakura-chan! Oh my Sakura," A friendly voice echoed throughout the hallway. Her head perked up, the voice was familiar to her and Itachi watched as a fog appeared in her mind trying to place her finger on who was in front of her.

"Kumori" her mind whispered internally.

Kumori…Itachi stored that name away for later as he examined the man approaching her. He had wild long hair that went every which way and broad features. Seeing through shades of gray, it changed and contrasted some natural aspects of the person. He didn't like it, especially since she didn't use chakra patterns or signatures to identify people. He preferred his blurry vision to her perfect gray.

"You remember me! Sakura my dear! Or should I call you Seal Break Sakura? Do you like the nickname I made up? I'm very proud of it," the man said as he squatted before her.

Images of a funeral that he never attended rushed past Itachi. He deduced that they must have been Sakura's memories as he watched them fly by. She had gone to this Kumori's funeral; he had been killed on an A-Rank mission from Konoha village. Itachi continued to simply observe and did his best to keep his presence unknown, keeping his thoughts as low as possible – least she would hear him and cease her absolute concentration on the crazed ninja before her. But he doubted that, her chakra reserves were empty and the only chakra she had in her body was the only thing keeping her alive with a tiny bit to spare.

"Bu-but…you're dead," Sakura stuttered as Itachi watched her cough up what appeared to be (gray) blood again.

"Marvels of life, my dear. Marvels of life," the man cleared his throat and then sat in front of Sakura Indian style – only her thrown up blood lay between them.

"Now let's get down to business," he began but was interrupted by Sakura, "I will not help you," she said as blood dripped down from her chip and onto her thighs, "Akatsuki are Konoha's enemies," she stared threateningly into his eyes.

Itachi noticed him flinch at the Akatsuki name, and Sakura took notice as well. She stored that bit of information away as did her mental intruder.

"Those…miscreants are….doesn't matter," he quickly amended, "I am not affiliated with them at all."

"I will not help you," she repeated herself.

'_Swallow it!'_ Her mind screamed at her.

'_I can't,'_ she told herself, _'I keep coughing up blood – I can't risk it.'_

Multiple personalities…Itachi noted.

"Don't you care to know what I want?" He asked cocking his head playfully to the side.

"No. Just kill me," Sakura deadpanned.

"That would be pleasant wouldn't it?" Kumori asked followed by a sigh, "But you see…if I have you. I can sell you. How much do you think you'll sell for?"

"I'm worthless," she replied without thinking.

"No, not at all," Kumori leaned his face closer to Sakura's, "A worthless shinobi does not know how to open the Forbidden Seal Gates of the Hidden Caves….that were created using ancient jutsu. That technique in itself would fetch for millions…"

Itachi felt Sakura's mind vibrate with understanding – obviously she had locked up those memories for protective purposes.

"Do you remember now, Sakura-chan?" The man began as he leaned back again, "that mission in that village…what was it called? Ah…yes, Village in the Caves. Do you remember?"

Itachi saw pieces of the memory that escaped her protective barriers as they were pulled forward for recollection.

They were being chased after by twenty skilled shinobi's and were desperately trying to escape as they rushed through the maze of caves. He saw through Sakura's eyes as she and Kumori continued to create clones of themselves that went every which way. But in her memory, something was strange. It was displaced. Events happened in different order and sometimes even repeated themselves multiple times.

Itachi carefully observed this while remaining objective with his theories. Was it her disorganizational skill to make sure that other shinobis could not infiltrate her memories? To jumble up her memories in difficult to comprehend orders? It was a possibility.

He watched as Sakura yelled at Kumori from her memory, "Left! Ninety degrees right and right and straight for seventy meters then left at thirty degrees!"

Itachi observed Kumori's surprised expression as she shouted directions and he quickly obeyed her – leading the way. Then it seemed as though her memory skipped a few moments and Sakura was being attacked by at least six dozen shurikens slicing into every part of her skin. She screamed and lost her footing – falling down.

Suddenly the memory returned to the previous scene of them running down, Sakura and Kumori were rushing towards their demise but this time Sakura took out six kunais and flung them into the shadows – killing every single ninja who was apparently ready to ambush her.

Then she had gone right, only to be ambushed by a dozen waiting shinobis. Then it returned back to running before the fork in the maze. She went right again, this time attacking and fighting with the ninjas. Again, her memories rewinded and she went right and changed her fighting style. A dozen more situations with various consequences and results passed by with going right. Finally, she returned back to the previous position and turned left and Itachi was unable to follow the mesh of what she saw happen at lightning speed. Once more her memories returned her to the latest disabled attack.

"Left!" Sakura said once more as she glanced back at Kumori- gaining distance on him. He didn't bother to hide his facial expression. He was stunned and speechless. Itachi assumed that her decision making all occurred within seconds.

"Faster!" Sakura growled under her breathe as she forced them to increase their speed, coming towards a crescent shaped dead end.

"We're screwed," Kumori panicked.

"Shut up," Sakura snapped.

Again, there was a dozen gaps in her memory with Sakura and Kumori surrounded by thirteen skilled ninjas but before the memory could continue, Sakura was back at the seemingly dead end with her partner.

"Three minutes and twenty-two seconds," Sakura muttered to herself.

"What?"

"Stand back," she snapped at him again as she looked around the cave with her medic ninja eyes.

Then he saw what she saw.

There were special chakra markings all over the cave walls. The chakra was ancient and sealed over fifteen times. But there was a way out; he could feel Sakura knowing it in that moment.

Itachi watched through Sakura's eyes as she slowly formed a pool of Chakra at her feet, "Don't move. You move, you die," she warned. Her chakra began expanding till it touched the edge of the crescent shaped dead end. The symbols that seemed invisible to the naked eye appeared on the walls and Sakura began to make hundreds of hand symbols as she manipulated her chakra into the wall.

Itachi understood then.

Every symbol had to be done with the exact right chakra flow and pattern. Every movement needed to be precise. Some hand symbols required three seconds apart from each other, while others required one second or less.

He watched as she broke seal after seal – faster than anyone would ever believe possible. She was getting ready to open a gate that hadn't been opened since before shinobis were known as shinobis – back when they were called warlocks.

On the last seal the walls began to shake and everything rumbled.

"Sakura! Sakura! There's…there's an earthquake!" Kumori yelled, but Sakura ignored him as she finished the last of the symbols. The wall before them shattered and revealed gaps of light.

"Ten seconds to spare," Sakura muttered to herself as she grabbed Kumori's vest and pulled him behind her, "MOVE!" she yelled as both shinobis jumped through the cracks forming on the shattering wall.

The memory took only a second to reply, but Itachi memorized every valuable detail.

_Sakura could break ancient seals…_

…_and she could see the future. _

It also explained how he avoided her Sharingan's ability – it condensed three seconds into three days, she may have been looking four seconds ahead, completely avoiding it.

"Do you realize how electrifying it is to be your partner?" Kumori asked after he noticed recognition on the Kunoichi's dirty face.

Sakura said nothing but internally she thought, _'How electrifying will it be when I smash your skull into a dozen pieces.'_

'_You and what Chakra?'_ she continued her internal dialogue.

Kumori placed his hands behind him as he leaned back further, "You are amazing, you know that? I was in class with you in the academy. I never cared for you, or your team seven. You were the worst of them, you know? A little girl misplaced within legends. But look at you now. You don't even get scratched on S-Rank missions. I'm a bit surprised the Akatsuki were able to knock you out."

'_I was low on chakra dipshit,'_ her inner self growled as her outwardly expression gave away nothing.

"But oh well. They saved me the hardship of trying to subdue you," Kumori continued with a lazy shrug, "Now then. My little Seal Breaker, I need you to help me."

"No," Sakura answered.

"Yesssss," Kumori hissed, "Yes, you will, my dear."

Sakura scoffed before she began to cough up blood again.

"Oh! That's right! Thank you for reminding me, darling," he started leaning closer to her once more and stuck his hand into her mouth and paralyzed her jaw with his chakra as his thin twig-like fingers reached into the back of her mouth and he pulled out the 'death pill'.

"You were always ready to kill yourself. I made sure you'd be coughing up your innards, you know, just in case you swallowed this little beauty," he said showing her the blood stained pill, but Sakura didn't see blood.

She only saw gray liquid.

"That's one thing I always wondered on. Why were you always so ready to commit suicide every mission when things got rough. Those three times we went together, when we ran across any conflict what so ever, you, my dear, already had the pill in your mouth. What other secrets are you hiding, Sakura? Is there something else? Something that keeps you seemingly immortal, my dear?" He smirked but then shook his head from side to side, "but you're not immortal. No…look at you now…" Kumori said motioning his hand towards her as his other crushed the pill between his fingers. Suddenly the somewhat insane man reached into his belt under his cloak and pulled out a kunai.

He offered Sakura one devilish look before he stabbed it right into the muscle of her thigh. Twisting it.

Itachi immediately found himself clenching his own thigh in surprise as he returned to the realms of his own mind.

"Itachi?" Kisame questioned again as he noticed blood soaking through Itachi's pants.

Itachi stared at the blood.

_She suffers. _

_I suffer. _

"Hn," Itachi breathed in response to both his blue comrade and his new predicament.

"What are you doing?" Kisame asked again as he finished the last piece of cooked fish when his partner stood up.

"Washing out this wound," Itachi replied coldly as if it should have been obvious as he walked towards the lake. His real reason was to check the wound for poison and to go back into Sakura's mind. This time, if she got hurt and he felt the pain of it as well – he would not react the same way. He would remain in her mind.

He did not retreat.

He was Itachi.

There were no poisons in his wound and as he placed his pants back on, his Sharingan activated right away as it usually did when he sensed something.

He noticed the youngest member of the Akatsuki organization nearing them. So, Itachi walked back calmly towards Kisame, "Deidara is on his way here," he said taking his seat on the other side of the dyeing fire.

"Are you sure you're alright, Itachi?" Kisame asked with a slight hint of worry.

After all, he really didn't want a new partner.

"Hn," Itachi responded closing his eyes as he listened to the flapping of Deidara's clay bird approaching them from miles away. His little kunoichi problem would have to be dealt with later.

"Don't die on me," Kisame warned as he stared at Itachi's relaxed position.

Itachi answered with his signature grunt, he was getting annoyed of Kisame's worry, but considering his partner noticed – it meant that he would have to become more discrete with his new problem.

The little kunoichi better stay alive – Itachi had no plans of dying anytime soon. Sasuke wasn't ready yet.

Deidara's bird landed a few meters in front of them after jumping off his piece of art; he walked towards the two campers.

"Hey, yeah!" He greeted his fellow Akatsuki comrades.

"What is it?" Kisame asked looking at Deidara coldly. He was still pissed off at Deidara for trying to wrap his sword with his explosive clay to see if he could blow it up.

"Leader wants us to go to a wind village. Zetsu found five tails from Iwagakure, and the things active. Kakuzu's new partner's killed," Deidara said not evening remembering the new partner's name. It was Kakuzu's fifth partner this year.

"By the Yondiame or Kakuzu?" Kisame asked as both missing nin stood up.

"Does it matter?" Deidara asked giving a loud yawn from both his mouths, "Kakuzu fought the damn thing but things got out of control. The demon apparently listens to his host and Pein sent Konan to subdue Kakuzu," Diedara continued as he jumped back onto his bird.

"Konan and Kakuzu still there?" Kisame asked as he and Itachi climbed on the bird.

"No, Pein sent Kakuzu on a new mission with that new member…Hidan, religious nut job," Diedara sighed as he remembered his latest mission with Hidan – he wished he could forget it, "And Konan is back at the base with master," the platinum blonde made his bird take off and head in the direction of the tailed beast they were to slay.

Itachi looked down at his forearm, feeling an undesirable wetness – blood. He was seriously going to have to deal with the connection he had with the pink haired kunoichi soon because blood loss was not on his agenda.


	7. Breaking Seals

Sakura grinded her teeth together as she watched gray blood spill out of her thigh. The bastard removed the kunai slowly with a twist so to double the pain and increased the damage to her muscle fibers.

"Look at that," Kumori admired his work gleefully as he brought the blood stained kunai up to her arms that were secured above her head by a seal and chains. She could feel him tracing the blade along her forearm but was too weak to bother to look up to see the blood seep down.

"I scratched you up," he continued as he lowered the kunai so he could show it to Sakura as if it were the only proof he had.

"Congrats," Sakura muttered dully as she inwardly wished she had enough chakra to use her Mirai to go over her choices and pick the best outcome – preferably the one that left the purple haired bastard with a big gaping hole in his stomach. She couldn't remember the last time she had felt such helplessness or in the mercy of another person.

But she couldn't use her Mirai without more chakra, and she hated that she did not have an unlimited supply of it like Naruto. _Stupid nine tailed fox vessel bastard_…she had thought about, more than once, stealing that fox from her ex-comrade.

"So," Kumori continued, ignoring Sakura's sarcastic praise as he threw the kunai into the wall across from them, "have you missed me?" he asked forging innocence. She couldn't believe that out of all of the memories she had of the man, none of them pointed to psychopath. He was just a chunin when Anko approached Sakura and asked her to train him while she went on an emergency scouting with Kurenai and Shino. Sakura of course accepted and took Kumori with her on a B Rank mission that went horribly wrong. That was the mission when Kumori discovered Sakura's vast knowledge on forbidden and ancient seals. A few months later he became a Jonin, and requested to go on a few more missions with Sakura.

Of course, she didn't think anything of it. To her, it was like Neji requesting to have missions together. Being an ANBU Branch, they were required to put the façade of Jonin in the record books, so their identities would be safe, and sometimes that required taking B and A rank missions.

"Do you remember how I died?" He asked shifting his weight from left to right.

"Retrieval mission," Sakura replied redundantly.

"Yes, it was an easy mission but on my way to it…guess who I met?"

Sakura began imagine the various ways of torturing him. If her finger could just poke his forehead he would be in a world of unimaginable pain…if only.

"And you wouldn't believe what my mentor told me…."

She wondered if using her medical jutsu to heal him just to bring him near death again was a bit too sadistic.

"She told me…that my dear sweet sister died…protecting your piss-shit excuse of a team."

Not sadistic enough.

"Naruto-dearest was trying to be the hero – dumbass thought he was able to protect everyone…what he didn't think of was protecting Rina from himself. He let her get too close! She tried to heal him… should have kill the asshole when he was trying to unleash 3 of the demon's tails! Haha….funny right?" His face became sad and solemn as he continued his venomous explanation, "Your teammates did nothing to protect her from that fucking asshole. NOTHING."

"She was an idiot then….everyone knows that – " a loud open palmed slap across the face interrupted Sakura's insult.

"Do you realize, my dear, it is because of your team's intense desire to bring Sasuke back that they allowed their medic ninja to die?" He snarled, ignoring all rationality and common sense, then suddenly his voice dropped, "I know the records; our Hokage demanded they return FIVE times, twice threatening to declare them all missing ninjas," he seemed to muse silently to himself about a hidden secret, "Have you ever thought if you'd have went with them – that they would let you die too?"

"I decline to hear any reports on Team Seven; I didn't know or care about your sister's wellbeing."

Another slap stung the other side of her cheek.

"ANSWER MY QUESTION!" he demanded, "you know they would keep YOU safe, no matter what…right? Right?"

"I could take care of myself," Sakura replied staring dead into Kumari's eyes, hoping to intimidate him enough so he would keep his hands to himself because his real death was going to be by her hands – she already decided. No Mirai needed. That future was set in stone as far as she was concerned.

But the psychopath only shrugged carelessly, "No one's taking care of you now."

Sakura didn't find it economically worth the breath to bother to respond.

"Well, anyway…" his mood shifted suddenly, "I need you to break a few seals," he said as he stood up swiftly.

"No."

"It's a seal inside of me," he said looking down at the top of her head; she didn't care to look up at him.

"Let me explain."

"Eat shit."

Kumari bent down and his hand shot out straight for Sakura's mouth and paralyzed her whole face in one fluid motion, "there, that's better. Now then, where was I in my tale? Hmmm, ahhh that's right. My sister's death. I do not care much for it except that she was supposed to break my seal. You see, my clan learns the ancient techniques of breaking our chakra binds but we can only perform it once. So…let me explain, my dear. Father or mother performs it on the eldest child, eldest child performs it on second child, and then the second child is the only one that may have two children to repeat the cycle. That's how our jutsu survives."

Sakura would probably sell her soul to the devil to regain just half her chakra so she could kill him and rid the world of his annoying voice and psychotic persona, painfully, slowly, and repetitively, of course.

"It is fascinating, isn't it?" he asked, ignoring the fact that he had paralyzed her from the shoulders up to keep her from responding, "but you see, my dear, my mother was from some useless clan, like yours, and well that means that the duty fell on my father to unlock my sister and my sister's job to unlock my seal. And now…Aha! Here is the moment everything comes together! My sister is dead and my seal is still locked inside me. My clan is not the helpful kind…and most of them happen to be somewhere in Suna. So," he squatted down beside her and removed his hand from inside her mouth and ran his blood and saliva stained fingers gently down her jaw line, temporarily giving her back the ability to speak.

She spat at him as soon as she regained control of her mouth, and he responded with another slap and condescending words, "You filthy fucking bitch, you are going to do it!"

"No," she answered with a wavering voice before she started coughing up whatever was left of her insides.

"Oh…see, I tried to play nice. I really did. I respect you my dear, you're a very beautiful and smart woman….so I will offer you an incentive," he turned his head to the side and shouted over his shoulder, "Bring him in!"

Moments later Sakura saw a large dark colored bear walk towards her on all fours from the pale light meters behind Kumari.

"NEJI!" Sakura shouted, using the last of her strength to try to break free of the chains that bound her but it was useless. She had to watch the large animal carry her bleeding and possibly dying partner on its back, unable to do anything.

"You break my seal, and I let him go. Simple?"

Sakura ignored him, "Neji! Neji – can you hear me?"

She heard a whisper of a groan from the ANBU.

"You fucking low life bastard," she hissed wishing with all her willpower that her eyes would have the latent effect of kill by sight. Neji was the only almost-friend she had left – no one else accepted her. It was gut wrenching to see him in such a weakened state. She had made sure to keep enough emotional distance from him so that she would never be hurt if he backstabbed her, but he never did and she hadn't notice how important he had become until she could not save him.

"Deal, my dear?" Kumari asked.

Every single training she had ever received since she was in the academic told her that the right thing to do would have been to say no.

"I'll have our medic keep him alive. All you have to do is break my seal and I will let him go."

Sakura's eyes looked from Neji to the bastard.

"One condition," she gave in, "you must swear on it through a seal that if you break your promise – you will instantly die."

"Oh my my my!" Kumari waved his hands around with joy as a smile spread across his face, "I didn't even know a seal like that existed! Oh little kunoichi, how do you live life letting everyone underestimate you?"

She didn't answer.

"Well then, very well – I agree. But I must go off on an assignment for the rest of the week. You will be fed twice a day and I believe that will provide ample amount of nutrition and considering all you're doing while being tied up is resting…you should have most of your chakra back by then? Right? Right right. Oh, and by the way, remember darling, you even try to escape; your friend over there dies."

She remained silent, another coughing fit threatened to escape, rumbling her chest but she clenched her jaw and took short controlled breaths.

"It was a pleasure as always, Sakura," he said, smiling sweetly as he stood up and walked away, beckoning the bear to follow, "Come, let's take this little shinobi back to Kabuto."

Sakura's eyes widened at the realization as her mind went on a rampage.

'_Orochimaru…'_ her mind repeated over and over as she began to internally panic.

She HAD to commit suicide.

She knew how to revive his arms and if he ever found that out….

And all this damn time everyone said that being a bookworm was pointless for a shinobi.

'_Look at the mess it just got me into…'_ Her inner self whined.

A throaty "Hn," echoed in her head as she looked around – trying to figure out where it came from. But she saw nothing.

Nothing but pointy rocks, and motionless shadows from the light around the corner of the cave.

"Hearing Sasuke in my head now," she muttered softly as she tried to push out any thoughts of her old team before she became nostalgic again.

She looked around trying to determine how much chakra she needed to get free. Five percent of her chakra could probably allow her to force her way out of the chains, but the seals that bound her wrists were invisible and she assumed that they were made to stop brute strength.

She experimentally tugged on it violently and felt herself being drained.

_I see…._

_Physical struggle causes them to activate a chakra drain. _

_Smart. _

But also stupid – that narrowed down the types of seals he could have used. Sakura tried to concentrate on the walls of the cave – after all; the chakra had to go somewhere. But she was too weak to be able to see anything worth mentioning.

So she leaned back, letting her head rest on a jagged and uncomfortable rock.

'_If I get free then I have to rescue Neji…'_

'_You don't know where he is and you don't have enough chakra for Mirai.'_

'_But I will have enough chakra in a week.'_

'_But in a week you have to unlock Kumari's seal.'_

'_God damn Wuu family.'_

Sakura understood his intense desire for wanting to break his seal. The Wuu clan seals were something she had encountered a few times in the library and probably suspected that Kumari knew about the generational bloodline pattern. Every five generations of the clan, one member would have his seal unlocked and simultaneously unlock knowledge of a sacred kekkei genkai. She never did more research on what it could possibly be.

It made sense of Kumari to believe that he was that the next one, especially if his sister didn't receive it and his father didn't have any bastard children running around. He was the oldest and last one of his generation if she remembered correctly.

She sighed angrily as she looked down at her legs. Her thigh was still bleeding and she could not mend it at the moment but she knew if she waited a few hours she could force a controlled amount that would keep the wound from getting infected at least.

'_Keep the wound clean? You should let it become infected!' _

'_No….I shouldn't….all an infected leg would mean is amputation – not death.' _

Even if she wanted to die, without suicide jutsu or the death pill her body would probably subconsciously break the Ying Seal, releasing the concentrated condensed amount of special chakra in her forehead to heal her completely. Of course, consciously, she was unable to do the hand seal to unlock it and was forced to deal with the unwanted pain. Years ago she had made a personal promise not to use the Ying Seal out of her own free will…it was something taught to her out of pity, not because she deserved it.

She bit her lip….hard.

'_Can't commit suicide.' _

'_Can't get out of here with physical strength.'_

'_Can't do any hand symbols to break the seals.'_

'_Okay…stop, what can I do?'_

'_Unseal Kumari's clan's seal.' _

'_Revive Orochimaru's arms.'_

'_Save Neji.'_

Her too acute memory suddenly drowned her in confusion Kumari had said, "I need you to break a few seals" – the seal in his body was but one.

_God damn, Mirai…._

It wasn't something she asked for….but it had soon become something that she couldn't live without.

She remembered the first time she discovered she possessed it – probably the fourth time it activated.

She was doing surgery; a woman named Tomitan, a civilian trade dealer, she had eaten a very poisonous plant while traveling to Konoha from a nearby village. The plant, ironically, named Blue Sakura worked in ways that Sakura hadn't encountered before. It was such a rare plant that information on it was scarce and often unreliable. It was damaging Tomitan's organs from the inside and it was in the women's bloodstream causing massive clogging. When that woman was placed on the operating table, her blood was nearly all blue and her veins appeared black against her skin.

Sakura was confused on what to do. It was the first time during surgery that she was unsure. She was indecisive on if she should stop the clogging blood, save the organs, perform a water cleansing, use chakra to create barriers around all her organs, or do a blood draining technique followed by a blood transfusion. As she concentrated on examining the woman hastily debating that maybe unclogging the blood would be the best form of action. Then suddenly when her hands were over the woman's heart, to begin, her mind leaped ahead where she was already dispelling all the clogging with her chakra but instead it caused all her blood vessels to burst and caused her to die instantly from inner bleeding.

"Sakura? Are you alright? What are we going to do?" A fellow medic nurse who had just finished applying the anesthetic chakra asked.

Sakura stepped back from the operating table in utter surprise. The woman who she had killed moments before was still alive.

"We should probably start by unclogging the blood," a male medic stated as he retracted a glowing green hand from the woman's abdomen.

"What?" Sakura looked up in a daze before collecting herself, "No! no, unclogging the blood will cause all her vessels to burst and she'll die," she explained – unsure on how she was sure about that.

"Then what?" The female medic asked as he looked up at Sakura's indecisive face.

"If unclogging the blood will cause her vessels to burst, then we need to do a blood draining and water cleanse to try to save her organs," she whispered to herself.

_Right?_ She asked herself mentally, but there was no leap of time or vision, or anything to reinsure her decision, so she went with it because the other choice had undesirable consequences, "Okay, Eric start to purify her organs through the water technique, Tikee get her blood type – I'll begin to drain her blood," Sakura commanded with false confidence.

The woman lived, but with massive damage to her organs which required her to come in for surgery five more times. Sakura wasn't there for those.

She sighed to herself as she opened her eyes again, nothing changed except the glimmer of light had become nearly nonexistent and the cave fell into almost complete darkness.

It was going to be a long week.

* * *

**A/N**: Thank you for reading, thank you for reviewing. I hope you have enjoyed it.


	8. FML

Itachi watched her drift into a deep slumber, her body was tired; it needed time to recover both emotionally and physically. He had entered her mind again when her fellow shinobi was brought in by a bear – partially because the stinging in his cheek aggravated him and partially because there was **very little** he did not know or understand – and for **a lot** of that **little** to be in condensed in the existence of a pink haired kunoichi caused his curiosity to sore.

He immediately realized that it wasn't a real bear by the chakra patterns, but an animal morphing jutsu and by the looks of it, the user probably came from a clan that specialized in it. It was a very useless jutsu in battle situations but was ideal for spying. He wasn't sure if Sakura noticed it because through her eyes she only concentrated on its façade and her injured comrade. Itachi deduced that while inside her mind, he could watch with his eyes through her eyes – although, to what extent, he wasn't sure.

He discovered that Taifuu was being operated by Oroochimaru – that piece of information would eventually prove invaluable. After she had passed out completely into a realm of absolute darkness he made his way to escape the confines of her mind…but then stopped at the last moment. Instead of leaving, he thought it best to take the time to examine how she had organized her personal space. She had so many hidden memories; with complex seals that Itachi did not recognize nor did he know how to break them. He found it alarming.

She had too many sealed memories for even an ANBU, and too many parts of her mind were scattered because of her Mirai…making it hard to read when a memory played with out with different scenes repeated hundreds of times with various outcomes, only to repeat the previous portion of the memory again for a moment before another onslaught of premonitions.

"Itachi," the faint whisper of Kisame's voice came into Sakura's mind but she didn't hear it since sleep had taken an iron tight grip of her.

_So you'll be able to hear and see me as you regain your energy_….Itachi wasn't sure how much he liked that idea. He went back through the hallway made of strange energy and chakra, and entered into his own mind once more – in no hurry at all – he was looking for ways to seal the hallway from her. But the bridge between them was created of a mixture of his and her chakra which meant they would probably both have to seal it together. Itachi was never a fan of equality – he preferred to have the upper hand.

"What?" Itachi asked coldly as he opened one crimson eye to glare as his two comrades.

"We're going to stop at the next village. Deidara senses it there," Kisame informed in, turning his face against the direction of the wind. The clay bird was increasing its speed as it flew higher into the sky.

Itachi nodded once and closed his eye again and traveled back into Sakura's mind. He gave up trying to figure out her sealed portions – he knew the basics of the language of ancients but he did not know how to read their seals. Instead he made his way towards the different memories that glowed in various shades of foggy blue. She had not sealed those away and the secondary voice that she usually had her mental conversations with replied from that general area.

At first they were pretty simple, He didn't find anything valuable. Picnics with her family, her uselessness in Team Seven, some childish moments with friends. He saw over two thousand memories of Sakura's mother dying and assumed the one where she had done nothing was reality and not a vision since it was the dimmest of them all, all the rest were overplayed and over analyzed. _The truth always has a way of being blatantly disguised_, Itachi thought to himself. Then, he saw some of her easy missions as a Jounin and as a member of some division of ANBU but none revealed anything important, so he pushed deeper.

Finally, he discovered a battered memory. A memory filled with so much emotion that it sickened Itachi, but it also happened to be a memory that Sakura seemed to rarely visit as a whole. Only pieces of it seemed to be worn out….taken out of their context as a reminder yet not remembered. It was odd.

"You wanted to see me, Tsunade?" Itachi watched through Sakura's eyes as she walked into the Hokage's office. It hadn't changed in appearance since the last time he walked through those doors.

"Sit," her mentor asked soberly, and Sakura made note of it – it made her nervous.

"Is everything okay?"

Tsunade sighed as she tried to formulate the most appropriate way to explain to her recently made Chunin apprentice, "Listen, Sakura. The elders have made a decision." It was much easier to put the blame on someone else but from Itachi's viewpoint, the Hokage carried a discreet look of guilt that he was all too familiar with.

Sakura raised her eyebrow and the missing nin could hear the thoughts going through her head. Naruto had recently come back from another year long training with Jiraiya and Sakura was prophesying that Team Seven would reunite once more. Sai, Naruto, Sakura, and Kakashi had been sent out on a handful of missions together and they had easily fallen into step as a team when the situation was serious. That was the only good memories she had since Sasuke left, the fact that Team Seven still existed and she belonged.

The prospect of being back with Team Seven was making her feel excitement that had been dead since Naruto had gone off to train and Sai was assigned ANBU missions.

Sakura wasn't a good prophet without the Mirai.

"The council of Elders have decided that Sasuke is to be hunted down and killed."

Sakura's eyes widened as she looked from Tsunade to Shizune in disbelief. But neither woman offered her anything but eyes full of pity. Itachi's jaw clenched tightly as he continued to observe.

"We can't! We have to get Sasuke back! He's only confused and hurt; he's not a bad person. He's a good person. He really is!" Sakura leapt to her feet, her eyes were clouded by unreleased tears as she pleaded.

"I agree," Tsunade replied coolly.

Sakura froze, not expecting that response. She waited for the Hokage to continue as a few tears streamed down her cheek. The swirl of feelings were causing the details of the memory to disappear. It was only Sakura and Tsunade in a dark empty space now.

"Sai, Kakashi, Naruto, and Rina will be going as the new Team Seven to subdue and retrieve Sasuke as long as they deem him safe to Konoha," Tsunade said, her eyes shifting away from Sakura, "The council does not wish for a mission of hunting down Itachi to be given but I exercised my veto….if they can get Sasuke back and he is mentally fit, I promise to use most of my resources to help Sasuke avenge himself."

Moments of uneasy silence passed while Sakura's mind repeated Tsunade's words over and over…mostly the name Rina which should have been Sakura's.

"Wh-wha-what?...why?" Sakura stuttered unsure what question to ask.

"You're an exceptional healer, Sakura," The Hokage cooed her, "but this mission involves the Akatsuki…."

Sakura's own mind went silent hearing the doubt in her mentor's voice.

"Rina's Clan Seal has recently been unlocked; making her into an exceptional Genjutsu user…it's on an almost unprecedented level and with her ability to function as both a fighter and healer…she's…" Tsunade finally locked her eyes with Sakura's, "a better option."

"But…but….I can fight too," Sakura stated with as little confidence as she felt.

"You're a decent combatant, Sakura. But…a fighter's raw strength needs to be mixed with other jutsu to be able to clam to be a good. I've tried to teach you that when I am able to, and I will continue to teach you, Sakura, but you're not ready for this mission."

_Not ready for this mission…. _Those words were torn, tattered, old, and overused. Itachi could tell that her mind had replayed them for years to come.

"You know the rules for field medics…

The Uchiha saw her memory become foggy and moments began to mesh together as her emotions took hold of her. He discarded that it away, doubting he would find anything else, and looked even deeper than that.

He found a memory of her fighting a clone of hers. When he examined it with his Sharingan eyes, he noted that Sakura had put a decent amount of chakra into her duplicate which was similar to a technique he, himself, used. Then he noticed that the clone was conducting the Uchiha fighting style.

In another when, he watched the clone performed the necessary hand signs for a Fire Release jutsu and attack Sakura, he felt the pain of her flesh melting off and the burning feeling of being consumed by the flames that overtook her whole body.

When the jutsu was over and her clone disappeared into a puff of smoke, Sakura fell to the ground, gasping as she began to heal herself without the use of her hands, something most medics were incapable of doing. It took over twenty hours of pacing herself with the use of chakra to heal herself completely. Then with rest, meditation, and food she stood up once more- re-summoned the clone and began again.

He pushed through those series of memories to discover that eventually using twelve percent of her healing chakra, Sakura was able to heal herself completely in thirty-five seconds of any fire damage. When she began to practice with stronger Fire Release Jutsus, she was able to create a medical protection barrier to keep herself from turning into ash.

Another memory showed that she did similar training against the Chidori – since she was unable to actually perform it herself. Without the assistance of the Sharingan, it was near impossible – and in that situation her Mirai was useless. So instead she went out during thunderstorms trying to get hit by lightening and healing herself. She used her Mirai to predict the locations and her first eight attempts landed her into a severe state of shock and unconsciousness. On her ninth try she didn't pass out but was unable to move for hours. On her fifteenth try she was able to move her fingers. On her thirty-eighth try she was able to heal half her body of the shock within three hours before falling unconscious from strain. Finally realizing the danger in her practice after her Creation Rebirth had unlocked itself when she was about to die, she developed an earth seal. Where as long as both legs were planted on the ground, standing in the middle of a carved circle meshed with her medical chakra, then four hand seals before and one after the lightening strike, she was able to make the earth absorb the shock and in three seconds her body was healed completely of any initial damage. Itachi was unsure if it was a plausible solution to the Chidori.

He tried to push even further into her memories, but could not see anything past her training with clones, a long haired boy who was the one currently imprisoned, and her simple use of her Mirai. Itachi was unable to find out how she gained the Mirai or how she created all the mind seals, so slightly disgruntled, he escaped her sleeping mind and returned to his own, to meditate. He ignored Kisame and Deidara's mindless bickering as they approached a civilian village that Sasori was occupying and waiting for them.

.

…

.

Sakura woke up to the smell of warm food – nothing delicious, but obviously edible, she quickly opened her dull eyes to discover a figure of a girl, no older than fifteen standing with a bowl of porridge in front of her. Sakura blinked the blurry a long sleep out of her eyes till her vision adjusted to the light.

"Was wondering when you'd wake up," the voice came from the girl that knelt down in front of the prisoner.

Sakura stared at her silently, examining every feature of hers. She had big round dark colored eyes and lips that seemed to be filled with scabs from biting. Her hair was a dark shade that matched her large eyes. The kunoichi didn't spot any visible weapons on the girl who wore a loose tank top and gi-pants but she didn't doubt that there were hidden ones.

"Kumari told me to feed you twice a day," she continued speaking as she grabbed the metal spoon inside the bowl and scooped up some of the contents to hold in front of Sakura's lips.

Stubbornly she turned her head away – refusing the food.

"Oh, it's not poison," the girl claimed redirecting the spoon into her mouth and swallow the porridge, "see?"

Sakura cocked her head, felling the stiffness in her neck and stared at the young girl with a hard gaze.

"You have to eat ,you know," she reasoned, "Kumari said so. He said you need your chakra."

Sakura remained motionless and the girl just sat there looking back at her. Her inner self demanded Sakura to spit at the girl but she couldn't bring herself to even create any saliva for that action.

"Alright," the girl said putting the spoon back inside the bowl and holding it in her lap, "just tell me when you're ready to eat."

The girl remained there, watching the prisoner who remained motionless with close eyes and lips in a tightened thin line.

_I have to figure something out. _

Sleep had given her chakra and most of it had gone into healing her leg – the cut in her forearm was just for display, it posed no threat, and she was unable to relocate her shoulder until the shackles were removed and she could move her arms.

_I have enough chakra for six minutes of Mirai in quick time and twenty in real time. _

_That's not going to do you any good without making decisions. _

_I know…_Sakura growled internally at herself.

She knew what physical strength would do – deplete her chakra.

She wondered if using her legs to put the girl in a lock and hold her hostage would do any good. But she quickly dismissed that idea. The Mirai would have drained her of most of her chakra so even if her hostage would have done any good…she wouldn't have the actual energy to do it in the present. Plus the position her legs were in would have made it very difficult. Kumari was smart to position her in a way so she was almost sitting – it caused an unbearable strain in her arms and numbed her legs at the same time.

She needed food.

And information.

Sakura opened her coal black eyes to see the girl still staring patiently at her. She activated her medic vision and glared at the porridge – it wasn't poisoned with any of the common arsenics.

"I'll eat," she murmured and the girl offered her a big comforting smile that did little to comfort the prisoner.

"Here you go," she said placing a spoonful near her mouth, Sakura opened up and swallowed. She didn't have the energy to do any other bodily movement.

It burned her throat as it went down; coughing up blood for hours had severely damaged her esophagus. She decided to spare some chakra to mend it as the girl continued to feed her.

"What is your name?" Sakura asked after the next spoonful.

"Ummm…you can call me Shini," she answered with a wavering smile.

"I'm Sakura."

"I know," the girl's smile turned into a mischievous grin as she scooped up some more porridge into the spoon.

"Where are you from? Sakura continued to question before the next offering. She couldn't find any form of village identification anywhere on Shini's body which made her think the girl was a civilian.

"I'm from nowhere in particular," she replied smoothly as if she thought Sakura was interrogating her and she wanted to make it clear that she wasn't giving up any valuable information.

"I see," Sakura decided to try a different tactic, "what do you know about me?"

"You're a medic ninja, apprentice for the Hokage – which is impressive I think, and ummmm…you can remove difficult seals," The medics face remained unreadable as Shini continued, "Actually, I think it's pretty cool. The seal removing I mean. I think being a medic is soooo boring."

"Are you a medic?" Sakura asked as Shini offered her the last bit of porridge.

"Nope. But Ka – I mean…I just know some medics and they are boring," Shini said stumbling over her words after her initial mishap.

Sakura swallowed the last spoonful and said, "thank you."

"Welcome! Oh, and don't worry," she said placing the bowl down with a clang as she rummaged through her pockets, "Here!" She held a thin little pill between her thumb and index finger.

"No thank you," Sakura denied, recognizing it as a soldier's pill.

"It's a food pill. It will help."

Solder pills were helpful for momentarily strength, but in her situation she didn't know what to use that strength for.

"I'm okay," Sakura lied.

Shini seemed to frown as if she was disappointed that Sakura didn't trust her, "well alright," she said picking up the bowl and standing up, "by the way, Sakura."

Sakura lifted her head up to look at the girl – even though the movement caused violent spasms down her back.

"Kumari's honest. He'll let your friend and you go if you unseal him."

Sakura stared dead into Shini's eyes, sending her a cold glare, reminding the girl that they were still enemies.

But Shini just shrugged off Sakura's dirty look and walked away, "I'll be back in twelve hours!"

The medic sighed as she felt her body begin to replenish itself with chakra from the nutrition she just received. Slowly she eased her head against the rock behind her and closed her eyes. She entered her mind, concentrating on all her seals – making sure all her secrets were still locked up tight. After the night's dream of memories she was worried something happened.

Everything seemed to be normal.

Everything was the way it should be.

Nothing was….

Something was tampered with.

Sakura concentrated hard to uncover what was different. It took some time, but she was able to dull out the demands of her body to only 'see' her mind. A figment of herself appeared inside her mental realm and began walking around, checking every single area.

There, she found a hole – an opening in her mind which she hadn't noticed before and an uneasy panic set in. She had organized her mind so well and with such a personal maze that it would take days for someone to even create a blueprint of it. But for how long was she out for? Had it been days? What happened?

When she located the hole, between her Ying: Seal and the memories of a B-rank seal creation technique. Sakura immediately tried to send chakra to close it or heal it – being that she was unsure of what it was but her chakra had no effect on it. With further examination she noticed her distinct pattern in the hole and when she got the courage to step into it she discovered it to be more like a dark and gloomy hallway. It was not made from seals and when she attempted one of her own techniques – her body reminded her of her lack of chakra and the hallway wasn't affected. On the other side she saw a dull light and went towards it – slowly, making sure her mind was still behind her.

_Light at the end of the tunnel_, she smirked internally at the metaphorical imagery she was creating. But when she finally reached the light – it wasn't heaven she entered – it was someone else's mind.

"Art is BANG!" A voice echoed loudly inside the area she stood.

Sakura walked towards the center of the mind to see through the eyes of the host. The persons mind was very well organized, even better than hers and instead of seals locking it, it was protected by simple power. It was obvious that the person was very….skillful and dangerous.

When she finally located herself in front of the mind's eyes, she witnessed a dozen explosions all around a dark colored four legged demon who was about fifteen meters tall. It was monstrous, and Sakura stiffened a yelp when she saw a pale haired man wearing a long black jacket with a red cloud motif landing beside her host.

"Damn the thing doesn't want to give up, yeah."

'_Akatsuki!'_ Sakura gasped to herself.

Itachi heard the kunoichi in his head, but he had no time to deal with her. The beast was being a hassle to dominate – especially with his seemingly impenetrable skin and lack of eyes.

Sakura felt a light glow around her body, indicating that her host knew she was there and it gave her an urge to run back to her mind because as she guessed – it was Itachi who happened to be her unwanted next door neighbor. But before she could leave, her Mirai activated like it did when she encountered perpetual and seemingly unavoidable danger that might end her life swiftly. Apparently her Mirai believed that she was Itachi – with Itachi's strength and immense chakra supply.

She saw the beast lace chakra into its tail and create a hundred tails of which then went every which way attacking his enemies. Her Mirai showed the blue scaly skinned man in the Akatsuki clothing block all of its chakra tails with his sword. It seemed as though his sword harmed the demon's tail and its attacks became less and less frequent. She also saw the blonde who caused the explosions swing up onto a huge bird and throw down little clay birds that exploded on contact – it did no damage to the monster. Then her host was going to get stabbed through the stomach and at the same time, she saw herself in her own body get a large gash in her abdomen that created a poisonous stinging which caused her skin to melt.

Sakura returned to the present in the blink of an eye and the moment she saw the blonde jump back onto his bird she screamed, _'MOVE LEFT!'_ as the explosions went off. She had on an unknown level understood that if Itachi were to become injured – she would suffer. Her yell was an act of self preservation a desire to avoid pain.

Her host seemed to obey her as he dodged the chakra laced tail by mere seconds. Then her Mirai went into stage three, which it did when Sakura was faced with multiple enemies and too many obstacles in her way all at once. Time slowed down in her left eye by six seconds, just like stage two, causing her to see the movements of everything around her and avoid them with ease – also making her seem as though she was moving with extreme speed. While, in her right eye – she was able to retain her jumping from present to future in quick time which meant hundreds of decisions were registered and the outcomes for them were presented as far ahead as 50 minutes if she pushed hard enough.

Stage three was the hardest to maintain while using the Mirai because when she lost her understanding between current and future – her whole body shut down, making all her senses null until a physical blow recoiled her back to the present. Many of the scars on her body were because of that.

'_Left twenty degrees!'_ Sakura said watching as another chakra-laced demon tail went after him, _'incoming attack in front!'_

Sakura watched as the future continually changed with every decision her host made.

'_I need to find his eyes,'_ a cold dark voice echoed all around her.

'_Right twelve degrees!'_ Sakura snapped, trying to ignore the wave of fear that overcame her hearing the man's chilling voice, _'right seventy degrees.'_

'_Shut up,' _the voice commanded, _'find me his eyes.'_

Sakura concentrated on her right eye as she made thousands of decisions trying to make the demon open his hidden eyes while considering the impact of everyone else's actions and decisions.

Somehow, he was able to see through her eyes, she realized as she saw him dodging everything perfectly through her left eye – or maybe it was because of his Sharingan. Her earlier shootings' to him to move were obviously pointless since he made his decisions in response to oncoming attacks in the split of a second.

After a few moments, Sakura found the monsters eyes.

'_Under his sto – '_ but before she could continue Itachi was already following what she had envisioned.

He created nineteen clones and ran them all around, confusing and avoiding the beast's chakra tails. The enraged monster tried to send sparks of electric fireballs at the twenty different Itachis. The original summoned Scattering One Thousand Crows Technique and a thousand crows appeared all over the beasts, pecking and disorientating him. The beast went up on its hind legs, trying to snatch and shoo the crows out of its way.

"Kisame, stab his stomach," Itachi commanded coolly, ignoring the monster's annoyed shrieks when he landed next to his partner. Sakura forcefully disabled her Level Three Mirai.

Kisame obeyed and at the next available shot, he stabbed his opponent in the center of its stomach. The beast let out a loud wail as it flung its body violently from left to right. Itachi's clones and crows vanished into crow feathers as the monster stuttered on its hind legs. The moment Kisame's sword came out of the monsters belly, a million eyes opened all over its body….and all of them met the Mangekyo Sharingan.

Sakura watched in utter fear and shock as Itachi used the Tsukuyomi on the beast. Putting it through excruciating amounts of torture with all four elements. To Sakura and Itachi the torture lasted merely a few seconds, but the beast experienced three straight days of hell.

When Itachi ended the Tsukuyomi, hundreds of clay birds rested all over the monsters eye filled body. A second later, all the clay birds exploded causing the beast to fall to the ground with a final defeated roar. Itachi lazily placed his arm over his eyes to avoid the blinding light of the explosions.

When the dust settle, on the floor only remained an elderly man in simply village clothes.

"How the hell did you know?" Deidara asked jumping down from the safety of his bird and walked towards the unconscious man.

"Hn," Itachi responded, taking off his Sharingan to preserve his chakra, considering that a large amount was drained by a certain kunoichi while using her Mirai.

Kisame picked up the body and slugged it over his shoulder, "I don't care how Itachi figured it out, I want to get the hell out of here."

"Man, rumors were right about this old bastard being harder than the nine tails to defeat," Deidara said after all three climbed on the back of the bird and lifted into the air.

'_You're going blind,'_ the girl spoke in his head.

He didn't bother replying to her.

'_How do you see?'_ she asked, and Itachi responded by violently pushing her from his mind, through the hallway, and into her own.

Sakura gasped out loud as her eyes flung open and she was back inside her body. She looked around and it was confirmed – she was still locked up, still cramped, and still in the damn cave.

Slowly she relaxed her cramped and tense muscles and gave out a loud exhale, _that couldn't have been a dream._

_Maybe I am going crazy. _

It had to be a dream, all her chakra was still there, the little that there was, and if she took the Mirai into the third stage without the aid of adrenalin, she'd probably be unconscious. Sakura continued trying to reason with herself for a while before she closed her eyes in concentration and went back into her should-be personal place.

The hole was there.

Her chakra and his kept it open.

It wasn't a dream.

She and Iatchi were….connected.

Itachi Uchiha, murderer of the Uchiha clan…the reason why Sasuke left to seek vengeance, and the reason why she no longer had a Team Seven.

_That son of a bitch! _

Fueled by anger and no logic what so ever, Sakura reverted back into her Genin attitude and went through the dark corridor back into Itachi's demented head.

'_What the fuck is going on!' _Sakura shouted, completely ignoring the fact that she was yelling at an Akatsuki member inside their head.

'_Shut up,' _Itachi mentally replied back.

'_Have you been inside my head?'_ Sakura asked demandingly.

Itachi didn't answer and Sakura was confused on why she couldn't read his subconscious if she was inside his head.

'_Because I can control my thoughts,'_ he answered her wordlessly_, 'unlike you, who requires seals,'_ he meant insultingly.

_Jackass. _

'_Bitch_,' Itachi answered her subconscious thoughts that she couldn't control.

After moments of unbearable silence Sakura spoke again, _'What now?'_ and her answer came with another swift blow out of Itachi's mind.

Sakura returned back into control of her own body and groaned with anger.

_Great…just fan-fucking-tastic. _

_I can't commit suicide. _

_Itachi knows about my seals and Mirai. _

_My mind is connected to an S-class criminal. _

_I just helped the Akatsuki clan kidnap a tailed beast. _

_The Akatsuki have a powerful scroll in their possession. _

_I am a prisoner of Oroochimaru. _

_Neji is still in danger. _

_I have to unseal Kumari's Kekkei Genkai seal. _

_I can probably never return to Konoha now. _

_And….I have to pee. _

She twisted her body a bit, trying to relax the pressure her bladder was giving…

_**Fuck…my…life. **_

_**

* * *

**_**A/N: **Hope you enjoyed this! :D Please review. :) _**  
**_


	9. The Scroll in the Volcano

Sakura didn't go through the mental hallway between Itachi and herself for the next three days. She heard strange whispers coming from his side of the mental realm but she did her best to ignore it and concentrate solely on her chakra restoration while also trying to formulate an escape plan without using her Mirai. She didn't get very far in the plan.

Shini came like clockwork every twelve hours to feed her and each time, she tried to start a conversation but when both girls didn't want to tell the other anything substantial…it seemed pointless. Although, some of the things Shini asked and said still managed to annoy Sakura to the bitter end.

"What do you do in Konoha?" Shini asked placing the empty bowl between her legs as she looked up at Sakura.

"This and that. What do you do here?"

"Stuff. Do you have many friends in Konoha?"

"No. Do you have many friends here?"

"Sure, everyone's my friend. You're my friend too."

"Tch," Sakura breathed out casting her eyes down at the floor – the girl was impossible to talk to.

"Is that boy your friend?" Shini asked cocking her head to the side, staring at Sakura with an avid curiosity.

"Maybe."

"Why do you care if he dies?"

"He's my comrade. I do not leave my comrades behind," she replied, echoing one of the few lessons Kakashi had taught her, yet himself managed to ignore by leaving her in Konoha. _Bastard_…her voice echoed the resentment she felt.

"Do you think he'd let you die?" Shini asked raising her right eyebrow.

Sakura didn't answer because she didn't know if that if sort of situation arouse whether he would let her die…because that's how the future worked. Every choice a person makes in a situation creates a consequence, and not every consequence is to that person's liking. So if the situation presented itself in such a way…Neji would probably let her die in the right circumstances.

So would Naruto.

So would Kakashi.

And most definitely, so would Sasuke.

Sakura heard Shini give out an exasperated sigh as she got up.

"Be back in 12!" She squeaked leaving the kunoichi still chained inside the dark cave as she headed towards the light.

The pink haired women took a deep breath and followed her chakra flow. She had kept off healing the little cuts and scrapes and only concentrated on the thigh wound. She had enough chakra to go into the third stage of the Mirai and more than enough to open Kumari's seal but she was still unable to escape from her sealed imprisonment. The pink haired girl soon realized that her chained cuffs which were connected to the cave wall had the seal written on them and if she could not see the patterns of her stored chakra or the chakra seal itself she would be unable to break it.

So she was stuck doing absolutely nothing except keeping an infection at bay and hoping the wound didn't scar too badly.

That was until a rough voice hissed out and called for her, "Kunoichi."

.

…

.

"Holy shit, yeah," Deidara cursed as he examined the ruins of the underground cave.

"This is…" Sasori touched the ancient walls with his hand gently, "amazing."

They finally got to the cave hidden inside the volcano of a Southern Fire Village and evaded all the ancient traps to enter inside the room of sleeping secrets. Itachi's eyes examined every detail within the closed oval space. All the walls were made of lava and extra splatters of bright red hot liquid decorated the walls, ceiling, and floors with unreadable kanji of an ancient language.

"Leader said that the scroll should be here," Sasori said bending down and allowing his finger to touch the red hot Kanji, "this is real eternal art…"

Everyone heard the sizzling sound and saw the hot steam coming out of every dark red kanji that decorated this room.

"This is intense, yeah," Deidara said as he stared up at the ceiling, "This place could collapse at any moment and we all go bang, yeah."

"This is a seal," Sasori stated as he stood up from examining a kanji on the floor, "this whole room is a seal."

"What? Where is the seal, yeah?"

"The chakra for the seal is within every rock, every inch of this place is protected," Sasori said looking towards Itachi who remained expressionless and still, "is there any genjutsu here?"

"No," The Uchiha answered as his Sharingan had proven that there were no illusions within the cave.

"Blowing up this place won't work, yeah," Deidara said sadly as he played with clay between his fingers.

"No…it won't," the redhead agreed, "I…I can't even read these seals fully. Half of this symbol means inward but…can either of you make anything out?"

"That Kanji says 'heal', yeah," Deidara said pointing to one across the room.

"Does it mean it should be filled with healing chakra?" Sasori asked, his voice was unsure and his eyes were agitated at his inexperience with seals of this level.

"I'll try," Deidara said, and the moment he had sent his chakra into the kanji that translated into heal, lava exploded into a sharp ray at him. He had quickly managed to move out of the way and the volcanic liquid fire landed on the floor – inches away from Itachi's feet.

The Uchilha remained calm as he watched the lava cool and turn into rock in front of him.

"Holy crap, yeah," Deidara said looking over his shoulder, "that was close." He almost sounded apologetic. Almost.

"There has to be a pattern…maybe it's like a puzzle?" The red headed puppet master questioned, trying to provide a hypothesis to the situation. Itachi remained immobile for another five minutes as he watched his partners examine other kanjis – trying to deduce their meanings. He was left with no choice, being unable to determine how to unlock the seal himself; he called out to the Kunoichi in her head.

He felt Sakura enter his mind hesitantly and from his peripheral vision he could see her black and white vision as she looked through his.

He immediately felt a recognition that didn't belong to him.

'_You know how to break these seals_,' Itachi stated, even though it should have been a question.

'_Yes'_ her mind automatically responded and then she tried to amend herself and lie, '_no_.'

'_Break them_,' Itachi commanded mentally.

'_No_.'

Itachi took out a kunai and Deidara and Sasori turned to look at him curiously. Then the Sharingan wielder stabbed his stomach where he was certain Sakura's uterus was located.

'_Ungh! FUCK!'_ Sakura screamed as he felt her retreat from his mind into her own. He ignored his own pain; he'd had worse, as he mentally followed her through their shared mental bridge into her mind.

"Did…he just….yeah?" Deidara asked staring at Itachi with a Kunai twisted into his stomach, blood gushing out down his lower abdominal area down, staining his pants.

"I…um," Sasori was at a loss for words as he stood frozen at Itachi – unsure if their comrade was possessed.

'_Kunoichi, break the seal,'_ Itachi demanded.

'_Fuck you!'_ Her mind screamed back at him as he watched through her black and white eyes as she sent a flood of healing chakra into her abdomen.

'_I will kill you,'_ Itachi thought coldly towards her.

'_You'll die too,'_ Sakura retorted as she grunted verbally.

'_I am stronger…I will live,'_ he replied simply.

He heard Sakura moan as she healed her injury, and he took note that she didn't waste chakra on anesthesia. He was so used to pain that he didn't really care about a simple kunai wound.

'_I will never help you. Now get the fuck out of my head.' _

'_No,'_ Itachi denied, _'you will break the seals or I will kill you and considering our connection…all your seals will evaporate and I'll learn everything. I'm sure Kabuto would also enjoy playing with the remnants of your mind.' _

Sakura would later look back in shock at how much Itachi 'spoke' to her in that instance, but at the moment she wanted to rip his head off and Itachi was well aware of the images of torture running through her mind.

'_You wouldn't dare,'_ she snarled.

Itachi made his body remove the kunai and then stabbed it through his chest – centimeters from their hearts.

"UGHNNNGH!" Sakura shouted in pain as she sent a large amount of chakra into her chest to mend all the blood vessels.

'_Break. The. Seal.'_ Itachi told her mind.

'_Go. Fuck. Yourself,'_ was her reply.

Itachi twisted the Kunai and Sakura's eyes flooded with tears as the pain became unbearable and worst of all – uncontrollable.

"Please…stop….I can't…Kumari," Sakura begged silently as she used most of her chakra to stop the loss of blood.

Itachi didn't bother to hear her out as he returned to his own mind and waited for Sakura to enter. He removed the kunai from his chest and glanced at Deidara and Sasori who were motionless and speechless.

He could feel his stomach and chest wound begin repairing themselves slightly – it was minimal but he felt it. It was ironic how they felt equal pain but when it came to healing they were on two different playing fields.

'_You are a fucking monster,'_ she insulted him as she situated herself to see through his eyes.

He didn't respond; his patience was growing thin.

'_Can you look around? I need to see every seal you hebi,'_ she continued to insult him. (Hebi = snake)

Itachi looked around slowly, giving her a 360 view of everything.

'_Oh my god, that's over a thousand seals,' _her subconscious was speaking without Sakura's awareness as she took in every detail through his eyes.

Itachi paused after he had made sure she got a good look at every single spot, even using his Sharingan to allow her to see behind Deidara and Sasori.

'_I…can't….I mean…I need...' _she felt like she couldn't say it. She had never told anyone about her Mirai and it felt wrong to tell him – she still wanted to believe that he didn't know. But sadly that delusion was shattered.

'_Use it.' _

Itachi knew, and he hated that she didn't have control over her subconscious like he did because all her floating thoughts were distracting at best and annoying at worst.

She needed to use the Mirai because the chances were that all the combinations except one would work and she wouldn't know otherwise. There were certain patterns that only applied to breaking seals of that caliber but there were countless number of combinations of those patterns that may or may not work. Ancient seal breaking had a lot to do with luck, and her Mirai kept her lucky.

'_I have to use up a lot of chakra…and because of your little display, I don't have much of my own left,_' she growled.

'_While you're here, you use my chakra.' _

'_Hmph,'_ Sakura's subconscious was at a loss, feeling stupid at not noticing it_, 'well it might use up a lot, with this many seals the possibilities are just insane but it does have the pattern I recognize so…'_ Sakura shut herself up when she realized that she was acting almost politely to a damn Akatsuki member.

'_Use your Mirai or your lung goes next.' _

The kunoichi activated her Mirai, silently promising to kill Itachi the moment she got the chance. Fuck Sasuke's vengeance, she was pissed. She began to go through trillions of different scenarios in her head at quick time in the first stage trying to discover which one worked to deactivate all the seals at the same time.

Even though she was using the Mirai in quick time, there were so many scenarios that it took her nearly two full minutes before discovering how to break it. In the blink of an eye, she could see 100 possibilities; this was the most complex selection she had ever gone through.

Itachi remained quiet as he watched her Mirai work from the corner of his eyes. He heard her mind whisper to herself in supersonic speeds, "future, present, future, present, future, present, future, present…" as she continued to restart various combinations.

Finally she stopped and Itachi was unable to catch the full combination of the seal breaking technique of her last vision that resulted in something useful.

'_Give me a second…I'll replay it in real time…I just…a little disoriented…' _she spoke to him and her subconscious added, _'and damn you for having so much chakra. Lucky bastard.'_ She didn't even use up a quarter of his energy with that…

He didn't say anything.

"Don't move," he ordered his teammates who still stared at him with awe and worry. Itachi felt it inside his as she began to use his chakra once more for the Mirai.

'_Copy it, and pay attention to the chakra manipulation…try to see it through my eyes…not the Sharingan.' 'And don't die'_ her subconscious add.

He began to copy the movements he saw in her eyes and repeated all the chakra manipulations she did at precisely the same time. It took nearly thirteen minutes and seventy-eight percent of his chakra to complete the seal break, but he had copied what the Mirai showed him to the t.

As he neared the end, various Kanji's in the room began to glow a bright blinding white color.

'_Good job,'_ Sakura muttered to him and then he heard the thoughts which reprimanded her for complimenting him and her own mind began to insult her. He was still not done and had to ignore her stupidity while only paying attention to the black and white movements of his hands in her eyes.

The walls were beginning to skin themselves and the peelings of stone were falling to the ground which was then turned into boiling red lava.

Both artistic centric ninjas jumped out of the way as Diedara let out a long winded breathe of curses before asking, "Itachi….what the hell is going on?"

"Make a bird, the floor is about to melt," Sasori demanded, jumping out of the way of an exploding gas bubble.

The blonde obeyed as he placed a large piece of clay into his hand's mouth and conducted the appropriate hand jutsus to make his favorite flying bird.

Itachi continued to do the last set of hand and chakra patterns, ignoring Deidara's warning of him about to be burned to a crisp. When he finally finished, a loud rumble came from the bottom of the volcano.

"Man, you really pissed the thing off, let's get outta here," Deidara said after both Itachi and Sasori jumped on.

"Deidara keep the bird here. Sasori call out a puppet that can fish something out of the lava," Itachi replied already knowing of their upcoming success and safety.

The bomb master navigated the bird expertly away from the melting ceiling as Sasori summoned a large tiger-like puppet with a long metallic tail that hung over the edge of the bird.

"What am I looking for?" Sasori asked as the tail began to slide lower and lower towards the ocean of lava under them.

"The scroll."

"I sense it, yeah," Deidara muttered looking down over the redhead's shoulder, "its sixty degrees left, yeah."

Sasori commanded the puppet to dive its tail further into the lava and retrieve the scroll that was presumably located there.

"Hurry, the clay is going to melt soon, yeah."

"Got it," Sasori muttered as the tiger puppet's extra long tail leaped out of the lava holding a dripping with hot liquid. It was large ruby and gold incrusted scroll.

"Make the ceiling explode and fly us out," Itachi commanded after the item was safely secured in the puppet master's hands. Deidara quickly followed Itachi's instructions and flung out two dozen birds above their heads and they quickly flew out of the melting holes in the ceiling, "Art is bang! Yeah," and the walls became to vibrate from the brilliant explosion overhead.

.

…

.

"Why did you stab yourself?" The red head asked after they were safely out of the volcanic room and flying out through the clouds.

Itachi ignored the question and watched the volcano behind them rumble with warning before finally exploding red hot lava from its core.

"Drop me off near the next Eastern village," Itachi spoke much to Sasori's dismay.

"Are you alright?"

"Hn."

"I think he just lost his mind, yeah," Deidara half whispered.

"Shut up," he demanded. Deidara thought it was directed at him but Itachi had lost his patience with the kunoichi's internal dialogue inside his head as she weighed the pros and cons of her actions.

Without having to push her out, she retreated into her own mind and Itachi exhaled sharply. He needed to meditate for the short amount of time he had left to try to regain his chakra.

Sakura went back into her body and began to curse herself out profusely enough to make a suicidal sailor blush. She couldn't believe that once again she had helped the Akatsuki. She had betrayed Konoha more often this week than anyone had in the past ten years.

Her hatred of Itachi was growing more and more with every passing hour – he had ruined Sasuke's life and been the underlying cause of Team Seven's split. Hell, maybe if Itachi had never destroyed the Uchilha clan, then her and Sasuke would have gotten together and she would be preparing for her wedding instead of being chained up in a cave in god knows where. She would still retain her innocence and would have probably never advanced in ranks but she would be happy. She would have green eyes and would be satisfied being just a medic. She would be fucking happy.

Just a medic would be fine if she was accepted.

_Shut up_, her own mind snapped at herself.

She couldn't look into the past's possibilities so all the wishful thinking of Itachi not being a missing nin was pointless to her in the current situation.

_Accept it. He is what he is. _

_He's in my fucking head. _

_Getting angry doesn't do anything. _

_He has the ability to get into my head anytime he wants. _

_God…_

…_Damnit. _

Sakura closed her eyes and used her Mirai to look into the future possibility in real time of her trying to break out of her chains. Just like she predicted, the cuffs would have absorbed more than their fair share of chakra and she would be left in the weakened state she was when she was first put there.

She leaned her head back with a loud thump, "Fuck me," she muttered at her predicament.

.

…

.

Itachi continued to meditate while hearing the whispers of Sakura's internal monologue and had to grit his teeth together to restrain himself from ending her life – reminding himself of her value. She was of some use to him.

"It doesn't make sense," Sasori spoke as he stared at the ruby scroll, examining it in the light. He had finished chipping the cooled lava off it.

"What, yeah?" The blonde asked.

"If Itachi had known how to break the seal, why did he wait so long? And why did he stab himself…twice? Did the seal need a blood sacrifice? And the scroll's seal is so complicated…I mean, look at this..."

Itachi breathed out swiftly as he opened his Sharingan red eyes and stared at the ruby red scroll that was now cradled in Sasori's arms. He shot the puppet master a warning glare.

"Itachi, what language was the kanji?" He asked ignoring the warning.

"Ancient Wicca," he replied – that bit of information had escaped Sakura's subconscious earlier.

"I see…I'm only slightly educated in the Ancient Christ….hmmmm."

"We're almost at the village, yeah."

After a few more minutes of silence Sasori asked, "Does the leader know you can break ancient seals?"

Itachi didn't respond; he would have to explain himself to Pein soon – if he didn't already know and the Uchiha assumed that he probably did.

Sasori returned to mumbling discreetly to himself as the puppet master dwelled into the deep ends of his mind trying to piece together pieces that weren't fitting together.

The winds changed from soft breeze to harsh blows from the east, and Deidara landed his bird a few miles from the forest – in a crop clearing to both let Itachi off and to rebuild his half melted bird.

The Sharingan wielder walked away in normal pace from his two teammates without so much as a nod goodbye. He heard the flapping sound of large wings as he made his way through the field of corn. He followed his path to where Kisame had situated himself – in the edge of the forest, sleeping under the shade of the trees.

When his blue skinned comrade felt Itachi's chakra come dangerous close he opened his eyes and welcomed his partner with a shark-like grin. Itachi returned a half smirk that was mostly just a momentary twitch in his lips as he settled himself across from his partner, leaning against a nearby tree.

"Hiding your chakra?" Kisame asked stretching his hands over his head and interlocking his fingers behind his neck.

"No."

"Oh," Kisame replied slightly wide eyed – he'd never witnessed his partner with such low chakra reserves. After an hour of meditation, the shark mutant shared information that his leader provided him and in turn Itachi lazily gave some information on his recent mission with the puppet and bomb masters.

They remained in silence as Kisame watched Itachi, internally proud of himself that the Uchihla trusted him enough to be in this semi vulnerable stage. He assumed that he did not want to be around the two other Akatsuki when his chakra was so low and came here instead of heading to the North Mountain base that Kisame was suppose to meet him in, in approximately two days.

Itachi traveled into Sakura's mind, _'how long until the girl comes to feed you?'_

'_I hate you.' _

Itachi remained inside her mind, silently threatening to shove another kunai into his chest.

'_Two hours,'_ she finally answered, fearing the realness of his wordless threats. Her death wasn't worth it, if it meant Itachi learning all that she knew.

When he received his answer, he went back inside his own mind and concentrated on the silence and peace of the environment as Kisame spouted useless descriptions about a whore he screwed the night before.

Itachi breathed out a small momentary chuckle at his comrades escapades. Kisame always knew how to lighten up the moment.

* * *

**A/N**: And the plot thickens! :) Thank you for reading! A special thank you for the comments. I appreciate them in ways words cannot describe. Please review. :)


	10. Weak

Sakura didn't follow him in his side and ignored the whispers coming from the hallway between them. Instead she was plagued with thoughts of what could possibly be behind the new scroll they found.

_Behind a brick. _

_Under a tree. _

_Inside a volcano. _

_Jade, Amethyst, and Ruby. _

Jade's mythological property was luck.

Amethyst was chakra replenishment.

Ruby was for mental stability.

Luck meant knowing the future; she could only guess what the others meant, though it seemed fairly obviously the Amethyst scroll would give an unlimited supply of chakra….oh, what she wouldn't do for that at the moment.

Those gems, her situation, the scrolls…everything was difficult to understand and it all made Sakura terrified. She couldn't be sure that she was the only one who knew how to open the scroll….what if there was someone else that could? Like the Akatsuki leader.

Her stomach twisted and turned as she thought of the endless possibilities but her Mirai offered no help. Sixty-two minutes of her own future was the maximum she could push herself except for the visions she had no control over. Even worse, she couldn't see ahead unless it involved her.

"Ugh," she groaned internally. Just a month ago she felt so invincible that she'd never get caught or hurt by anyone….and now she was chained up to chakra draining cuffs with a seal behind her that she couldn't see and being forced into situations that she couldn't avoid.

Everything seemed to be ending for the worse.

Her existence and her death would harm the innocent people, that she, as a shinobi, was sworn to protect. It was disgusting and Sakura could not find one piece of ANBU training or advice that could get her out of this.

After a little less than two hours of internal panic and evident self hatred, Shini walked into the cave with her usual meal that the Kunoichi was getting sick of.

"Hey, Sakura!" The girl greeted with an air of friendliness that didn't match the environment, "how do you feel? Oh my, is that blood? Did you try to hurt yourself?" Shini asked leaning in to exam the already closed wound on her chest.

"I tested the cuffs and caused some old wounds to reopen," the ninja lied.

"Oh, don't do that. I don't want you to bleed to death…Kabuto does, but I don't like him."

Finally…Shini gave her some information – and all it took was Itachi threatening to kill her, and partially attempting it.

"What don't you like about him?" Sakura asked smoothly, keeping it within the limits of their conversation.

"He's mean, and he plays with dead people. It's gross," the girl replied as she scooped up a spoonful of porridge and placed it near Sakura's mouth. She obediently opened and swallowed – allowing Shini to feed her without complaint.

"You don't like corpses?" Sakura asked, knowing it sounded like a dumb question but if she could get Shini to be truthful with her – for just a few questions, Sakura believed the girl might let something valuable slip.

"Not at all! I think it's wrong when he takes things from ninjas. That's stealing."

_Takes things from ninjas…So I was right. He wouldn't hesitate to kill me to reveal my secrets and steal them from me. _

"You don't like stealing?" Sakura asked, continuing with the seemingly harmless questions.

"Not at all. Well, I mean no. But yes," Shini's eyes shifted from side to side uncomfortably, "it's like…stealing something small and stealing something big but you don't know what it is. Something small to you could be something big to someone else," she half whispered the last part as she looked down at the chilling porridge in her hands.

"Did…you steal something….small?" Sakura asked hesitantly. It was the only follow up question she could think of, but she knew it was going to ruin the pace of their conversation.

Shini looked up at her with guilty eyes and quickly offered a big smile as she ignored the question, "open up!" she said placing another spoonful of the vitamin enriched food to the kunoichi's lips.

Sakura accepted it.

"So…" Shini tried to change the subject, apparently having enjoyed the communication, "What's your favorite season?"

"Winter, what about yours?"

"Winter? Why winter?" The girl asked, supposedly surprised by the pink haired medic's answer.

"Because winter doesn't pretend. There is nothing growing and blooming, or falling and dying. It just exists in its empty state."

"What? That doesn't make sense," Shini said scrunching up her nose.

"I like the cold," Sakura offered instead and the girl smiled with a nod of understanding, obviously preferring the second answer.

"Here," she continued to feed Sakura as they made small useless conversation again.

'Kunoichi,' a cold voice muttered inside her head and Sakura's eyes widened in surprise.

"You okay, Sakura?" Shini asked, pausing the feeding momentarily.

"Yeah, I just got…this massive headache all of a sudden," she replied bitterly.

'_What?'_ she thought back to him, along with a string of subconscious insults and curses.

'_Use your Mirai on her,'_ Itachi instructed.

'_What? I can't.' _

'_Use it.'_

'_I am not some….pet of yours! And besides, I can't!'_ Sakura spat back at him.

'_For all intensive purposes, you may deem yourself as my pet. Now use your Mirai on her.' _

'_What part of, I can't use it on anyone except __me__,'_ Sakura stressed the last word, _'do you not understand?'_

'_Do it.' _

'_Are you listening to me!'_ her inner self shouted vapidly at the Uchihla.

He didn't reply and Sakura gave a loud huff, as she wished the bastard could choke on his own existence.

"Are you okay? Your face looks weird," Shini commented leaning closer to Sakura's face than she would have liked.

"I'm fine…I was just thinking about something."

"Oh, what were you thinking about?"

"Someone I hate. A lot."

"Why do you hate him…or her?"

"He gets in my head and drives me insane," Sakura meant literally but knew that Shini would take it was a metaphor.

"That's no fun."

"No…it's not," Sakura agreed.

"You should ignore him, you know, not think about him. Or since you're a ninja, you could kill him."

"I'll probably do the later…"

'_Hn,'_ it sounded smug to Sakura as she began to feel her stomach wound reopen slowly. She shot medical chakra into the wound to stop the pain.

'_Fuck, stop….please….not everyone is into your masochistic crap,'_ Sakura pleaded in her head as she tried to repair the wound again.

"Are you sure you're okay? I can get Kabuto to take a look at you."

"No!" the kunoichi declined quickly, if Kabuto took a look at her he might notice all her seals, and peeking another psycho's curiosity was certainly not on her agenda.

"Yeah, I don't like him either," Shini said sighing, looking helplessly at Sakura who was starting to believe going from talking in her head to talking in person was worse than jumping from present to future.

'_Do it.'_ Itachi's voice was bitter and impatient and was everything that was wrong with the world.

'_I hate you…just putting that out there.' _

"Shini, I'm fine," and as soon as the last word left her lips she activated her Mirai and looked a minute into the future, disconnecting herself from it. It was painful and her desire of self preservation kept her from trying. She had attempted it a little over a year ago, but it had left her weakened and useless for a long time. A state she didn't enjoy…but since that seemed to be her state for the foreseeable future – becoming more useless didn't look so bad anymore.

The dark haired girl had decided to leave and was saying goodbye to the prisoner. Sakura used as much of her chakra as possible to try to follow Shini as she walked out but felt something like a leash tugging her back. It was similar to the feeling of being skinned alive, but Sakura bore through it.

When she managed to look around, she saw her own body staring dully at the end of the cave. Sakura tried to push herself even further out of her body. The pain was indescribable, and she could feel an intense strain around her eyes as her metaphysical self finally traveled to the middle of the cave.

Sakura gritted her teeth as she pushed her Mirai further…further out of the cave as the future continued to play out.

She felt the severe migraine forming in her head as she used the last drop of her chakra to go as far as possible but all she was able to see before snapping back into the present was darkness draped with stars and a thin moon that seemed to be laughing at her.

She trembled violently and gasped for air trying to fill her lungs with as much as possible. She had no more chakra left and all of her wounds had reopened. Blood loss was going to knock her unconscious soon. Tears streamed down her face involuntarily because of the mental and physical exhaustion she had brought upon herself.

She was right…she couldn't see other's futures, not without nearly killing herself.

'_You bastard, happy now?'_ but she was talking to herself…Itachi had left.

She was left feeling used.

.

…

.

Itachi felt the wound in his chest and stomach threaten to reopen again as he finally opened his eyes to look at Kisame who was leaning against the jagged sword, enjoying a nap.

"Kisame," Itachi awakened his partner.

"Yo," Kisame greeted, opening one eye.

"When do we have to report to leader?"

"You have to report in three days, I'm free till you're done."

"Hn," Itachi breathed out into the neck of his Akatsuki coat. He looked up into the sky, noting all the constellations and celestial positioning of the stars.

"I have a package that I need to pick up," he finally stated after orienting himself with the sky.

"Eh?" Kisame asked confused.

"There will be plenty of bloodshed that you can participate in," Itachi added as he stood up and activated his Sharingan.

"Where are we going?" Kisame asked standing up and stretching his arms over his head.

"One of the Taifuu headquarters. They have something of mine."

"But leader said…" Kisame began to falsely protest as he grabbed his sword. The blue skinned man was never going to deny fighting alongside Itachi's rare desires to engage in combat.

"Let's go," the Uchiha cut him off and Kisame smirked widely as they both jumped into the darkness of the forest.

.

…

.

Itachi and Kisame walked calmly up the mountain path wearing their Akatsuki cloaks and hats to hide their faces. Daybreak was two hours away when they finally entered the Taifuu occupied area.

"18 shinobis scouting the area, 6 camping out, 3 sleeping, 25 guarding a cave."

"The package in the cave?" Kisame asked with a cautious glance at Itachi. It wasn't every day that his partner agreed to needless bloodshed.

"Hn," he meant yes.

They both stopped at the edge of the turn, "You go catch the scouts – that should be fun," Itachi offered a half smirk.

"Aye," Kisame smiled widely back, "Save some for me when I get back."

"Hn."

They both disappeared. Itachi headed higher up the mountain at lightning speed and Kisame jumped off the cliff into the dense forest below.

The Sharingan wielder made the hand symbol for clone-jutsu and created two. One shot out west to attack the ninjas who were camping out while the other followed Itachi towards the cave concealed by patches of boulder sized rock.

"What the –"

The missing nin couldn't finish since the Itachi clone had already killed him and his comrades. A civilian eye would have only seen pieces of blurs and then watched a dozen bodies collapse to the ground.

The real Itachi let his clone take care of the others who were coming towards him as he stepped inside the dark hole of the cave. After a twist inside, he saw Sakura as she lifted her head, hearing someone's footsteps – obviously noting that Shini wasn't due for a meal visit for at least another six hours.

She gasped when her eyes beheld the dark cloud motif cloak, and when her eyes traveled towards the face of the man – her stomach sank. She must have murdered babies and put them in pies in a past life….because this was just too cruel.

"Itachi," her voice was weak and frail, "what are you doing?"

She should have been scared, but she wasn't, knowing that if she hurt, he hurt – brought some comfort to her. She pushed the fact that he was a psycho masochist who probably stabbed himself in the gut every time before bed to the back of her mind.

Sakura watched as he performed unsealing jutsu and she felt the chakra absorbing properties in her cuffs disappear. With his last finger movement, the handcuffs gave a loud echoing clank and her deadweight arms fell down to her sides.

"Get up," itachi's voice rang through every corner of the cave.

Sakura stared at him in disbelief, feeling vulnerable, pitiful and weak. If she hadn't used up all her chakra attempting to see beyond herself, she could have stood a chance against him for a few seconds – long enough to give him a well deserved hook in the face. His cold eyes didn't need color to see the death threats looming behind hers as she glared at him.

She tried to get up but she was unable to move her arms – they felt detached and so sore from almost a week of immobility, and her shoulder was still dislocated. She wasn't able to even use her hands as leverage and her legs trembled with every movement she attempted to make.

Finally after shuffling herself around, she got on her knees and fell backwards on the floor, her knees could not support her weight anymore. Itachi just stared at her while she failed, noting that every ounce of her chakra was drained and she was more useless than a civilian.

Even though she was obviously unable to hold her weight with her legs, she continued to try again. Itachi's gaze was cruel and challenging and she didn't want his condescending look on her anymore. Had her arms been willing to move she would have released the Ying Seal and high tailed it the hell out. But the god damn release required one god damn hand symbol and since she wasn't seconds away from dying so she couldn't release it subconsciously.

She forced her back up against the wall for support, groaning as a protruding rock dug into her shoulder, drawing blood. She was soon going to be in desperate need of a blood transfusion – that of course only depended if Itachi didn't stab anymore of her organs first.

She grounded her shaky legs onto the floor as she continued sliding up the wall till she stood – the rock slid from her shoulder down to her lower back as she continued to rise.

Itachi's eyes narrowed as he felt his back wet with his own blood. Then he watched her try to propel herself off the wall to stand without support but she fell down face first. He tightened his jaw as he stepped towards her, her breaking voice begged him to leave her alone, but he was never any good at following orders.

She could fell his strong thick arms warp around her weak body and pick her up.

"I w-w-wont hel-help you," Sakura stuttered as her head fell into the crevice of his neck, her eyes drenched with tears as she made empty threats, "I swe-wear, I'll ki-kill you."

"Shut up," he muttered adjusting to hold her bridal style. She felt the cold refreshing air hit her sweat and blood drenched body. She closed her eyes and continued to cry, being unable to imagine what the monster would do to her. Everything was terrible. She was so miserable and horrified at everything that had happened in the past two weeks. She had forgotten what it was like to be weak and she hated every second of it.

She didn't think of Shini, or what became of her as the smell of freshly drawn blood hit the kunoichi's senses. Nor did she think of Neji's life or Konoha. All she could think of was the simple fact that Itachi had her in his arms and she was helpless.

Utterly helpless.

Just how she was with Team Seven.

Unable to do a damn thing.

'_Shut up,'_ his voice echoed in her head. He didn't care to hear her pity consuming thoughts.

'_I hate you! I hate you! I hate you so much! I won't help you! I swear I won't! I –"_ but before she could finish Itachi had knocked her out – one simple pressure point and her mind went blank. Just like stupid Sasuke…

He no longer had to hear her stupid whispers in his own head – the damn hallway needed sound proofing.

"That was fun!" Kisame exclaimed with a smirk as he joined Itachi while walking down the blood soaked trail.

"Hn."

"That the package?" The sword wielder asked twisting his head to the side to get a better look at the woman.

"Yes."

"She smells god awful."

Itachi didn't protest, after all, Kisame was right – she smelled filthy.

* * *

**A/N:** Hope you enjoyed! Please leave a review :), thank you!


	11. Fake Conversations

Sakura sat in front of the fire with Itachi's Akatsuki cloak wrapped tightly around her body, snuggling her face into the neck of it to hide tearful face. Completely out of control, it was like way back when….when she was useless. Easily captured, easily defeated. She couldn't stand it. The Kunoichi had never seen this coming.

She had woken up the next day to Itachi dropping her on the floor and telling her to go take a bath in the lake that was a mere foot away. He tossed his cloak at her telling her she made it reek after he carried her and commanded her to wash it, and then he mentally warned her that he could see her thoughts and would know if she escaped. Freedom was an illusion for her now.

_How sweet…_

Defeated, dejected, and destroyed, Sakura went to clean herself out of her soiled clothes and carefully crawled into the freezing cold lake. Her body shivered in the frigid water but she was grateful for the lack of pressure of the liquid. Standing, moving, sitting – they all hurt her. Floating was comfortable, even if her lips were turning blue and hypothermia was only minutes away from settling in. She tried to put away the fact that Itachi and Kisame were around the bank waiting. Akatsuki were waiting for her. She scuffled. Wonderful company she was keeping.

She closed her eyes and dove her head into the water – she couldn't take it anymore, she just wanted to drown herself and let Itachi know all she had spent years hiding from the world but her inner self reprimanded her for being so weak and she surfaced.

_Drown and Itachi gets all the secrets. _

_He's stronger; he can survive your suicide. _

_Then you will be responsible for destroying millions of innocent lives. _

_You become worse than an Akatsuki if you die. _

_Deal with it. _

_Suck it up. _

_Don't give up. _

"Don't give up," she repeated to herself out loud in a whisper. She was an ANBU captain for fucks sake. She was rated S class ninja! She had 41 S rank missions completed under her belt! One less than Kakashi! The legendary copy ninja. God damnit. She had no right to complain. Everytime she found herself in a somewhat difficult situation, she would wait it out till her Mirai would show her a way to succeed. This was no different.

She would get away.

And she would kill Itachi.

She swam to the edge of the lake and lifted her body up and turned to sit on the ground. She began to clean out her wounds and careful dispensed minuscule amounts of healing chakra to them; she decided against using the Creation Rebirth for the simple fact that she wasn't sure if it would heal the fuck-tart's wounds as well. She was stubborn enough to suffer as long as he did too. The female attempted to wash her clothes afterwards but failed miserably – the stains and smell would never come out without soap.

So she sat by the fire, facing two dangerous missing nins with nothing but a cloak covering her naked body. Itachi didn't say anything to her when she didn't return his cloak but wore it herself. He simply grabbed her and threw her over his shoulder easily, ignoring all her internal protests as he ran beside Kisame towards wherever they were going. They ran for nearly a day and a half straight without stopping and for most of it, Sakura was passed out – hanging upside down off Itachi caused too much blood to go to her head and looking any which way caused her to become nauseous and dizzy. Anytime she thought trying to injure Itachi, he would mentally show her what he would do to her.

Demented bastard.

Eventually they set up camp deep inside a clearing in the forest. Itachi simply threw her to the side; a tree stopped her from skidding further. He went to go look for firewood and left her alone with the blue skinned shark-man. She thought about running away, but knew it would be useless. He was still in her mental realm.

'_I hate you….'_

'_Hn.'_

The other Akutsuki man offered her some dried fish he carried with her, but she refused. She only wanted to sit by the fire and pretend that she was warm, safe, and had some control. The man who sat across from her ruined that delusion.

So instead she watched the sword welder bite into a large fish and chew loudly. Apparently he wasn't raised with an ounce of manners. Her stomach growled softly, but that only made her curl her knees closer to her chest. She should have eaten, to get back more energy, but Sakura wanted to wallow. Wallow just a little more, she brought her face down – allowing the oversized cloak to cover her completely.

Hours passed and the only conversation was between Itachi and Kisame – Kisame did most of the talking about how he looked forward to their next village and some harlot who apparently Kisame was lusting after. He tried to tell Sakura about the awesome bars but she didn't bother to lift her head to acknowledge him. His voice creeped her out, and his teeth…was he even human?

She wanted to be left alone and welcomed the silence that eventually fell between the group.

"Deidara," Itachi muttered as he glanced up into the night sky. Sakura lifted her head up to look at her captor. She hated him. He was manipulating her and using her for his own gains and his gains were the world's loss. _Fucking asshole. _

"Eh," Kisame grumbled as he folded his arms across his chest.

Moments later she noticed a large bird appear in the horizon over the bushy trees with a human sitting on its back. She recognized him from Itachi's eyes. He was the bomb master.

Her eyes followed the figure as the bird landed gracefully a dozen meters away from them. The man with the platinum blonde hair hopped off and with a leisurely walk made his way towards them.

"Hey! Yeah," he greeted everyone and then his eyes fell on the pink haired girl cradling herself, "Why, hello there. New member?" Sakura glared at him, how dare he even consider that! "My name is Deidara, yeah."

"Sakura," she muttered into the neck of the cloak wanting to jump into the fire.

"It is a pleasure to meet you, yeah," he bowed his head slightly before Kisame interrupted his introduction.

"What are you doing here? Don't you have a mission?"

"Finished a couple of hours ago. Sosari's out looking for a petrified wood for a new puppet, yeah."

"What are you doing here?" Kisame repeated his first question.

The blonde haired man took out a scroll from his pant pocket and tossed it to at him, "Leader has a mission for you Kisame and he wants Itachi to report to him."

Sakura's eyes darted towards Itachi and Kisame as they stood up.

"Watch her," the Uchiha said to Deidara as his partner opened the scroll.

"I don't need a babysitter," Sakura snarled back.

"Cuff her," he added, walking towards her and snatching his cloak off her body, causing her to fall over, naked, into the dirt.

'_You try to escape – I'll know,'_ he threatened her mentally.

She didn't move, she was too horrified that Itachi had forcefully exposed her body like that. Bathing was one thing; she had control on how much of her body was within view…now Itachi had exposed her. She felt worse than the dirt that her face was resting against. She curled her body up tighter. God knows how many of these guys rapped women for fun.

She closed her eyes and wished the world away. She wished she was in the hospital. She wished she was training with Tsunade and gossiping with Ino. What the hell did she need to become a ninja for? Why the hell did she have to prove herself? Why couldn't she leave that damn scroll alone!

She was pulled away from her self-pitying when she heard shuffling footsteps walking towards her and another cloak fell on top of her body. She opened her teary eyes to see Deidara sitting beside her without his on.

She didn't move.

She didn't want to exist anymore.

It took all her will power to keep from hyperventilating into a panic attack. Years of relying on only herself, and being dependent on only herself, had hardened her but it was only a shell. Her insides were as soft and mushy as any internal organ – easily cuttable.

She closed her eyes tightly again as she tried to hold her body together with her arms – as though afraid she was going to fall apart in any moment.

"So, who are you, yeah?" the man beside her asked as he flicked twigs into the growing fire.

"A prisoner," Sakura half muttered half sobbed after a minutes way.

"Itachi's, yeah?"

"Yeah," she whispered. She was not going to cry. She was not going to cry. If this bastard tried to rape her, she would kill him with her bare hands. Chakra be damned. No man was going to defile her.

"I won't hurt you, yeah," he said softly, seeing all the fear and despair seep from her face.

"Heh, sure," Sakura replied disbelievingly.

Everyone in the world was out to hurt her as far as she was concerned. She would soon have to self diagnose herself with paranoia.

"Do you want to go to a hospital, yeah?" he asked slowly articulating every word.

Sakura's eyes widened, that was not something that she thought could come from a missing ninja of Akatsuki.

He waited for her to reply, and it took some time before she realized he was serious…he wasn't teasing or making a joke. He was showing a form of compassion. A mass murderer was being compassionate to Sakura.

_How fucked up am I?_

"No," Sakura finally replied since there was no point in going to a hospital; they couldn't cure a hopeless life.

"So…" Deidara tried to keep the conversation going, "whatcha do to get captured?"

"Exist," she replied move her body slightly and lifting the majority of her face off the dirt. Tears streamed down her eyes unwillingly.

"You're sad," he stated the obvious.

"So?"

"I don't like sadness, yeah," he replied, almost childlike.

"You cause sadness everyday!" Sakura snapped, unable to handle the fact that he was being nice. He needed to be a jackass! All Akatsuki were bastards! All of them!

"I'm sorry," Diedara whispered as the fire crackled with an addition of more twigs.

Sakura could no longer help herself, she burst into savaging sobs as her body began to tremble uncontrollably, "I'm no better…I'm no better." God…was she bipolar or something?

He stared at her, unsure of what to do. He had never actually comforted anyone before. Except for that little girl in the Timber Village who dropped her ice cream cone…but children were easier to please…and he didn't have candy on him at that moment.

"Erhm…" was his best response.

"I want to run away, but I have no chakra. I want to do something but I don't know what's going to happen. I have to do bad things and I don't want to…I'm – I'm so fucked."

Sakura eventually got herself together after a few moments. A round of deep breathing later, she apologized for her outbreak – feeling extremely embarrassed. How fragile was she?

She tried to sit up but the cloak kept sliding off since she hadn't actually put it on.

"I'll look away," Deidara said noticing and turned his head to the forest as she lifted her body up to dust off the dirt and wrap the cloak around her tightly and properly.

"You won't take the cloak away without notice, will you?" Sakura asked bringing her knees up to her chest again.

"Nope, you can keep it," Deidara smiled looking back at her tired puffy face.

"Tha-thanks," she replied uneasily as she hid the majority of her face in the collar of the cloak.

Suddenly Sakura felt something on her knee and her face shot up, prepared to defend herself, instead of seeing the sleazy bastards hand; she saw a small little bird, pecking at her cloak.

Her teary eyes turned to Deidara who was smiling proudly as she sniffled, "you-you made it?" she asked sticking her hand out of an opening to touch the clay creation.

"Yeah," he smiled, "Watch it."

She watched.

The bird flew a few meters above the fire and then Deidara enthusiastically screamed, "Art is BANG!", and the bird exploded. Sakura squealed in surprise as her hand clutched at her heart. If she had more chakra, her Mirai would have warned her about it.

"I'm sorry!" he said as he leaned further away from her, still unsure of what to do, "Did I scare you? Are you okay? Yeah."

She stared at his honestly worried face and gasped for air, not realizing she had held her breathe, "Yeah…yeah, I'm okay…I just haven't been surprised like that….in years."

"Oh? I have a lot of surprises, yeah."

Sakura cocked her head to the side and gave him a weak smile as she asked, "Show me?"

"What's your favorite animal? Yeah."

"Butterfly," she responded immediately.

"Why?"

"When it's inside a cocoon, it's trapped and is forced to transform….it has to fight and struggle to get out or else it dies. It fights to live."

"Are you struggling? Yeah," he asked as he placed a piece of clay inside the mouth of his hand.

She watched his palm's mouth eat it, "You have no idea."

All of a sudden the hand spit out over a dozen clay butterflies. They flew all around the two of them and Sakura awwww'd when one landed on her nose – half expecting Deidara to blow it up then and there. Eventually, one by one they did explode but it was all at a safe distance away from the two of them.

Sakura's mouth lifted to a half smile as she watched the last one turn into a bursting firework. She looked at Deidara and for a moment she totally forgot that he was a missing nin. She forgot that he was a murderer. She forgot that he was her enemy. She was that desperate for companionship.

He smiled back at her, being happy that she had finally warmed up to him a little bit. Anyone that had to deal with Itachi deserved some remorse and compassion.

"So that hair color real? Yeah," he drawled out, making his foreign accent more prominent.

Sakura nodded and he tossed a few more twigs into the fire.

"It's nice," he complimented offhandedly before she tried to stiffen a yawn. Her eyes draped down slightly but shot up again at the sound of his voice. "You can go to sleep, yeah."

"Oh, are you sure?" Sakura asked. She was a pretty light sleeper…so if he tried anything…

"Yeah."

She nodded at him and scooted away a bit so she could lean against the tree.

He watched her curl up, clutching the cloak tightly. It had been a very long time since he'd made a new friend and he kind of liked the pink haired girl. She reminded him of his mother…and this girl he once knew. Once upon a time. Before life got too complicated for him and he had to simplify it.

Bang. Bang.

.

…

.

Sakura slept till the next day and finally woke up in the middle of the afternoon. Deidara had remained faithfully beside her, keeping an eye on her and making sure that neither of them were in any danger. While also being gentlemanly enough to keep his hands off the defenseless girl.

When she had awoken, she groaned as she pulled herself up. He watched her with great interest as she made some muffed groggy noises and her eyes slowly looked around with a lost and helpless expression on her face before suddenly her eyes widened with realization. She definitely did not act like any ninja he had ever met before. Little did he know that Sakura had thrown all hopes of escape away and rarely ever acted without knowing the future. She knew she was bound to Itachi in so many ways that it violated her insides. So she had to wait…wait and be captured until her Mirai could show her a way out.

"You okay? Yeah."

Sakura stared at Deidara as recent memories flooded back into her.

"Oh…yes, sorry…I just…." She sighed, "got used to being chained up in that damn cave."

Itachi chained her up in a cave? Deidara wondered, "Why were you chained up, yeah?"

"A psychopath needed something."

He didn't press her for more information and when her stomach growled her asked, "hungry, yeah?"

He watched some color return to her pale white face before she finally nodded in defeat.

"Let's go, there's a lake about two miles away, yeah," Deidara stood up and waited for Sakura to get herself ready. She tried to get up but her legs trembled visibly and to her, they felt like jelly.

"I can carry you, yeah," she heard him offer like a gentleman.

_Gentleman? I have lost my mind…_

"No, please. I need to walk….myself."

Deidara put his hands into his pockets and dug through the back up clay he had for emergency situations and finally found a food pill, "Here, I only have one but it will help you a bit."

She looked up at him with an expressionless face and he had to remind himself that he wasn't exactly the most trusted person on the planet. He placed the pill between his teeth and broke it in half – swallowing his half and offering the other to Sakura.

He watched as she lifted her shaking arm to take it and place it into her own mouth. She swallowed dryly, and it went down slightly painfully. But it was for the best.

"Want to fly? Yeah?"

"Can I walk? I need to use my muscles."

"Yea, sure, yeah," Deidara nodded with a smile as he realized that she was only denying him so she could regain some of her strength and control, although he still leaned down and offered her his hand. With a moment of thought she accepted. If she could get him to trust her…betraying him would be that much easier. He had taken an irrational liking to her…she could use that against him. She offered him a fake smile, and coiled her arm around his and they walked into the depth of the lush green forest. With that much needed rest, logic had returned her once more.

She looked down at their intertwined arms and noticed a small thin bracelet around her wrist.

Deidara saw that she finally detected his clay and he had to explain himself, "It's for protection. It's made of my clay."

Sakura looked at her other wrist to find the same pale bracelet, "So it will explode?"

"There's one around your neck and on your ankles to…and yeah they will explode if you run away or do something…stupid, yeah, sorry."

"No…it's okay…I get it," she sighed as she looked back at their interlocked arms, maybe getting him to trust her would be harder than she expected, "Heh, I just never thought I'd be walking arm and arm with an Akatsuki."

"I'm Deidara," he replied coolly.

"What?" Sakura raised her eyebrow at him.

"You called me an Akatsuki…but that's just my…club, so to speak. I'm more than that."

Sakura slowed her walk down and concentrated her gaze at Deidara thoughtfully. Her legs began to wobble and she thought that she'd tip over at any moment.

"You're right," she nodded at him before looking straight ahead again, trying to tense her muscles with every step, "I used to think I was just a medic," she admitted to him. The more useless information she gave him, the better the chance of him giving her something useful.

"But you're also Sakura, who's a medic and whatever else you have up your sleeve, yeah."

"Well right now I have a bomb up my sleeve apparently," she joked and he chuckled softly. She still felt awkward communicating with other people…but her life, and maybe hundreds more, were hanging on her shoulders. So she would act like a normal person. Make jokes, smile, and pretend to be innocent…and as not-dangerous as possible. She needed him to have that impression of her.

They sped up their pace a little when Sakura found her center. She felt Deidara's arm tighten around her own anytime she hesitated a step or swayed in her balance. She hated him for being so nice, but kept that anger deep inside. Very deep. She could never forget what he actually was.

"So where are you from, yeah?"

"Erhm, Konoha," she replied, not believing that it mattered anymore…and then she realized that she had lost her headband…somewhere.

"Itachi's from there too, yeah."

"Mmm, I hate him."

"Hah, I hate him too. Do you hate me?" He asked teasingly.

"I should…" she began, "I mean; I don't understand why you're being so kind to me."

"Why shouldn't I be kind, yeah?"

"I mean…you kill."

"And you don't?" he challenged.

"But I'm ordered to kill by my kage," she justified, playing the naivety card. She knew the world wasn't this black and white. She knew better than anyone else; grays were made up of black and white.

"And I'm ordered to kill by my leader."

Sakura became silent knowing that she understood him…in some sort of way, but couldn't think of a proper response that would keep them within the parameter of a peaceful conversation. Her Mirai would have been so helpful right now!

"What makes your murder more justified than mine?" he questioned her and Sakura bit her bottom lip hoping to display an unease from the conversation. She needed him to believe that she could be easily swayed.

"There…I don't think there should be a reason for murder," Sakura said carefully, "It shouldn't be justifiable…by anyone." The perfect response.

"But you'd still kill without question if your Hokage orders you to, eh, yeah?"

"I…I –" She pretended to be conflicted by his question. Of course she would kill if her Hokage ordered it. Tsunade was as close to God as anyone would get in her eyes.

"You see, when you kill, you kill someone's brother, sister, lover, mother, father….which is why when I have to murder I try to murder the whole family so they don't suffer a major loss."

Sakura was disturbed that she was able to follow his logic. She hadn't expected that. At least Deidara didn't create vengeful Sasukes…

"Do you have any family or anyone who cares?" Sakura asked suddenly.

"Me? Nah. They're all dead, yeah."

"Oh."

"What about you, yeah?"

"No one who really cares…" Sakura muttered as a gust of wind blew her hair every which way.

_Beautiful_, Deidara thought to himself, in that moment – Sakura looked like a wild nymph who was free from all the laws of nature.

"How could a cutie like you not have anyone, yeah?"

"They have better things to do," Sakura responded, trying to force more emotion into that statement than she actually had. She wasn't as resentful anymore; hell she barely cared about most people anymore. She had a duty of a ninja, and that preceded anything and anyone else. Thoughts of Neji were buried very _very_ deep; she pronounced him dead and refused to mourn. They both knew the risks of being ninjas; their lifespan was never promised to be a long one.

"Well…then…I won't. So now you have someone."

She stared at him with a look of surprise and confusion, he replied to her expression; "You don't believe me, yeah."

"No…I don't," she replied honestly.

"It's okay. If we don't have to kill you – I'll prove you wrong."

Sakura chuckled as she stepped over a fallen branch, "I think everyone's' going to be out to kill me soon." How ironic.

"If our leader wants you alive – we'll protect you. I'll definitely protect you."

Sakura looked at him with sad eyes as her voice cracked unintentionally, "tha-that sounds like a promise."

"It is."

"Lucky for you, I can take care of myself so you won't have to break it."

"I won't break it, yeah."

"You'd be surprised how many promises you'll break in the right situation."

Deidara rolled his eyes and changed the subject, "Do you miss your village?"

Sakura thought about his question for a moment and then shook her head from side to side as her lips mumbled a soft no. She never missed her village – out of a year, she spent about a good 200 hours there…enough time to sometimes spend the night, sometimes get a few hours in the hospital, and grab her next mission. She had no ties there.

"Why not, yeah?"

"I'm rarely around...I go out on missions almost all the time since I don't have anyone there…wow…Look at the river! It's beautiful," said pointing to the creek that was coming into the clearing. It was a good distraction from her revealing more about her personal life.

"For now yeah…When the sun moves the beauty will be lost, yeah."

"It will still be beautiful," she defended…especially to her black and white eyes. It looked like the sky had fallen into the water.

"Not like this moment."

"Hmmmph," she said. This felt like a very strange conversation to have. Is this what normal people talked about? She was so used to tactical conversations that this felt all wrong to her.

But she had a part to play.

* * *

**A/N**: Thank you for reading and a big thank you for reviewing. I appreciate them very much.


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